October
12, 2007
When Memory Starts Faltering (1)
A couple of days back, I spent
almost an hour searching for my car at the multi-storied
parking structure of a hospital. It was no solace
to recall that Southern California has more cars
than scores of foreign countries and several states
in the US and that I was late for my appointment
with the specialist I was to see for the first time
in that hospital. I had to accept the fact that
my memory had started faltering. On my way home
I started reflecting on the significance of memory
in the life of a person.
Our memories, it occurred to me, define who we are.
They represent the repository of our personal past,
our understanding of our selves, and our roadmap
for dealing with the world. When you start losing
your memory, it is like losing the recognition of
who you are. Acts of mental slippage, I feared,
might predict more serious problems to come. It
might even lead to Alzheimer! That sent a cold shudder
down my spine. I had to stop this negative train
of thought, this gloomy tangential mental musing.
So I pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food
restaurant to collect my thoughts and recompose
myself. Let me step out of the car, take a few deep
breaths and rest for a while, I counseled myself.
The thought of rest took me to the restroom and
I started smiling. That had shifted the train of
my thoughts. I pondered how euphemism had given
a veneer and glitter to a basic human need. Euphemism
– hypocrisy wrapped in politeness - turned
a lavatory into a washroom, a toilette, a bathroom,
a powder room, and now it is called a restroom.
Interestingly enough, in the hectic life of America,
this is the only place where a person can really
find some rest. It is a haven for a shirker. No
wonder, a lavatory is called a lavatory in an airplane;
there is just no room for rest there.
The visit to the restroom did give me a break from
the dark, wayward thoughts. I was back to my normal
self, neither ebullient nor gloomy, but given to
an analytical and objective approach to problems
of life. Presently I recalled what Dr. Samuel Johnson,
the famous lexicographer and wit, had said about
memory. “The true art of memory is the art
of attention.”
The lapse of memory as to where I had parked the
car, I rationalized was the result of my lack of
attention to the locale where I had parked the car
in that huge structure. This temporary lapse, this
mental malfunction, I maintained, was triggered
by the anxiety to be on time for the appointment
with the medical specialist whom I had never met
before. The anxiety was aggravated further by the
fear that my ailment could even be cancer. Subsequent
tests disproved the apprehension. It turned out
that my prostate was growing in an inverted proportion
to the shrinkage of my brain cells. Anxiety creates
stress and when we are under stress, we cannot think
as well, remember effectively or pay attention to
our surroundings.
The anxiety having thus been set to rest in the
restroom, I thought I ought to do some reading on
how to strengthen memory. The public library had
literally scores of books on the subject. I took
half a dozen home. Some of these were written by
MDs – neurophysicians or surgeons. They were
Greek and Latin to me. The others were written by
psychiatrists commonly known as ‘head shrinkers’
or ‘shrinks’. They too were not sparing
in the use of multi-syllabic expressions. A couple
of them were so verbose and complex that I could
hardly wade through their writings to pick the gems
of their thoughts.
One of them said: One of the most distressing prospects
for adults is the thought of developing dementia
or organic brain dysfunction. In the recent past
the common wisdom was that a gradual progression
into senility was an inevitable path followed by
everyone. It wasn’t a matter of if; it was
a matter of when.
While I was still reeling under this punch of the
shrink, the derogator of my inherent optimism, I
found him taking a U-turn and contending that more
recent scientific data had shown that older adults
had only a slight chance of developing senile dementia.
This pulled me out of the bleak reverie. But, his
flip-flop and the profuse use of professional jargon,
made me put the book down of this ‘psychic’.
Another writer had a more positive offering. Forgetting,
he said, can provide a useful buffer against life’s
misfortunes and un-pleasantries. Supposing you start
forgetting the pleasant events of your life and
remember only the sad episodes, such a memory lapse
would be a barrier between you and your happiness.
This happened with a near relation of mine who used
to be bubbling with happiness and was blessed with
an uncanny joie de vivre.
Now he views everything through the prism of paranoia.
He is unable to explain this; a shrink might attribute
it to a high-sounding cause which only he could
comprehend.
Almost all writers, pompous and pretentious or not,
recommend regular mental exercises for improving
your memory. Mental exercise, they contend, is as
essential for your mind as is physical exercise
for your body.
Regular physical exercise is considerably helpful
in maintaining a healthy brain too, they advise.
It would help clear the sludge build-up out of your
brain and sharpen thinking and memory function.
The best form of exercise is brisk walking, biking,
and swimming. Get your heart rate up to between
100 and 120 beats per minute and sustain it for
at least 20 minutes.
A very effective mental exercise is solving crossword
puzzles, they contend. Had President Reagan been
devoting hours to such puzzles, would he have staved
off the onslaught of Alzheimer? If so, he might
not have been able to thwart the Soviet Union. Nor,
would it have been possible for the Afghan Mujahedeen,
the freedom fighting Davids to defeat the Soviet
Goliath. Come to think of it, President Reagan must
have had to exercise his mind more intensely on
the mundane problem of downing the “the evil
empire” than he would have on crossword puzzles.
The present President, George ‘bring-them-on’
Bush, is a great fighter. Soon after the catastrophe
of 9/11, he launched a war on terror and eliminated
the Al Qaeda training sites in Afghanistan and forced
the hodgepodge Taliban fighters underground. Before
taking this campaign against the terrorists to its
logical conclusion by completely destroying Osama
and his loyalists, his itch for war diverted his
attention to Iraq and its presumed weapons of mass
destruction. Despite the unprecedented demonstrations
throughout the world against the war, he went ahead
and landed in the quagmire of Iraq. He has put on
notice “the axis of evil”. Perhaps he
would be well advised to take some time off and
devote it to crossword puzzles. That would give
him peace and to the rest of the world too.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
