Remembering to Forget


My blog now bears an uncanny resemblance to Aamir Khan's filmography. Unfortunately for me, my resolve to write more often, pricks my conscience only during the holiday season (American company time-off) and like every year, as I reminisce about the time gone by, it's only nostalgia that helps with the inertia. Ironically, this time around, Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind was the movie I chose to revisit some long buried memory lanes. I still remember how this movie intrigued me and why! However, it’s been a long stretch since, and while it still remains one of my favorites, my fascination for it has, over time, normalized. Having said that, the lines from the original poem still mesmerize.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

And with that, I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to not have memories or to be able to make them at will. Does that keep the sanctity of my sanity or destroy it? Don’t memories sometimes drive you crazy? Doesn’t losing them? And while I keep my white and dark angels at that, here is something I wrote to keep my blog’s run rate going.



There by the dying light,
Where the skies race to infinity,
The sea is calm or so the deceit,
It's there I know, that our worlds will meet.
So, from horizon to another,
I walk on for countless snows and springs,
Forgetting to remember the day as it is
Still yearning for the eternal dream.
But the sunset today is a shade less dim,
And winter too has shed its last whim,
To that I wonder, if eternity is but akin,
An endless spin from end to begin.
Now the breaking light too beckons,
To follow not but omit, the past within.
But I trudge along wondering,
What remembering to forget would mean