A small memory

I was in Bangalore last weekend after a long time. Nearly three years.
Had a hell of a time meeting up with old friends and gossiping, as if it hadn't been a day since we last met. Memories kept coming rushing back.

It's an amazing thing, the way memory works.
I read somewhere - maybe in a science fiction story - that each memory in our heads had a unique chemical formula. Each memory stored was actually a mix of some elements and could be expressed as some complex compound. What an intriguing thought ! Does that mean someday, a scientist could synthesise a memory ? Could someone manufacture a thought ? The very idea chills me. It's simply too exciting for words.

I got very little time to myself in Bangalore. Always rushing off to meet someone or the other. One evening I was walking near a park, heading towards my old house to meet my old neighbors, when I suddenly saw something that made me stop.

It was a small broken bench in a park. Coles Park, to those who know Bangalore.

Wasn't much to the everyday passerby, but it brought back a whole flood of memories back to me.

When I was about 7, my father and I used to go for morning walks in this park. Bangalore used to have spendid weather at that time. We were walking there, at about 6 in the morning when suddenly I happened to spot a small pup. Brown, with white patches on it. I had seen the little fellow right under that broken bench. It seemed amazing to me that that very bench should still be there - almost exactly as I last remembered it. My father and I had taken the pup home and left it in the kitchen. My mother threw a fit on seeing it, but the pup was kept with us for a little more than a day, after which we realised we couldn't take care of it properly, and had to go and leave it at the same spot where we had found it.

The whole incident was a trivial one, but an inanimate object like that broken bench helped play back - like a movie reel - a day in my life of about 18 years ago. And the emotions associated with remembering an incident very vividly are quite amazing. I could hardly move away from that spot for a while. I looked around the park and realised that not much had changed after all. The swings, stone slides and even some of the trees in Coles park were recognisable. Every little thing had a meaning. Each image a constitutent of a small compound somewhere in my head.

I had to half run away from the spot, as it was all a bit overwhelming and scary.

I wish the mystery of memory is solved in my lifetime. I would love to know why we remember some things, and some other things (my studies, for instance) never seemed to find a place voluntarily in my head.

I wish someone could enhance those memories which one wanted to remember vividly.

Then again - I think - would it be a blessing to remember a lot of things ?
Personally, I have had a tough time forgetting many things in my life.

Maybe we are built all right after all.

But I wouldn't mind if I somehow came to know the formula for the memory of how I first brought a dog home from the old park.

I would keep in under my pillow for a long time.