Memory is a funny thing. Two people may have the same experience, but ask them about it many years down the line and they will remember it completely differently. It’s as if the brain selects elements that are important to you, retains them, and deletes everything else as extraneous. So, no two people can ever have the same recall of an experience they went through together.
I thought of this again recently when the classmates of my English Honours course in Loreto College, Calcutta (as it then was), formed a WhatsApp group to stay in touch, update each other on our lives, and plan reunions for the future. Sadly, soon after we formed the group, our formidable principal, Sister Maeve Hughes, passed away. So we shared her obituaries and chatted about our interactions with her in college.
That’s when the bombshell dropped. Two of our members talked about how she had taught us Milton’s Paradise Lost. That came as a complete shock to me. I had no recollection of ever attending such a class. When I said so on the group, my college bestie, Seema Mayecha, commented, “You sat right under her nose! Paradise was truly lost!”
But just as I was worrying about whether I was getting early onset dementia, I was reassured to find that several others on the group didn’t remember Sister Maeve teaching us either. (Or, it wasn’t just me who was losing my mind!)
But as the conversation progressed, it became clear that all of us remembered completely different things from college. I had picture-perfect recall of the classes taught by the witty Miss Chatterjee. Others had fond memories of different professors. Clearly, even though we had attended the same course, the memories that stayed with each of us were completely different.
Going back further in time, it is much the same story. My childhood best friend, Kavita Walia, and I often have catch-up sessions in which the conversation invariably veers to our growing up years. But strangely enough, we never ever remember the same things. She reminds me of the time we played a trick on my grandmother; an incident I have wiped from my mind. I remind her of the time when we were chased down the street by a cow; but her mind has erased that traumatic memory. And so on.
This selective retention of facts extends to my working life as well. Much to my chagrin, my husband remembers some stories and interviews I did as a young journalist much better than I do. And the interactions and articles that left an impression on me, he doesn’t recall at all. We often joke that between us, we can fill in the blanks that exist in the other’s minds.
So, I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad that so much of my college life is lost in the mists of time. Perhaps now that all my classmates have got together, we can pool all our memories and thus manage a perfect recall of our college days. As they say, it takes a village. In our case, I guess it takes an entire class!
From HT Brunch, August 09, 2025
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