“Do you have my mobile,” my husband asked just as we entered our apartment. “No, I don’t and I am not going down to get it from the car,” I said with disdain despite my own numerous instances of forgetfulness.
“I am not asking you to get it. I left it in the car and I will go,” he said.
This conversation happened just an hour after he rattled off with great pride the 14-digit account number to an astonished bank officer. He always amazes me with his remarkable memory of phone numbers, car registration numbers, credit card numbers and so on.
Yet, he would forget to buy things I ask him for from the market and to turn off lights and fans. Together we worked out a strategy to avoid repeated trips to the market by jotting down things to buy and work-to-do on a black board in our dining hall. For the lights and fans, I am debating whether to make the house “smart” through automation and AI or make my husband more careful through stick-on reminders at strategic points.
A recent survey by Uber has shown that Mumbai is the most forgetful city when it comes to passengers leaving things behind in a cab, followed by New Delhi, Lucknow and Kolkata. I wonder if a taped message can be played before the cab comes to a halt to remind passengers to take all their belongings as done on passenger aircraft. People forgetting their mobiles and even laptops in cabs, and our friends narrating their instances of absent-mindedness give us consolation that we are not alone in this. The fictional absent-minded professor is a butt of many jokes and may not be so fictional after all. We take a tolerant view and attribute his forgetfulness to focussed thoughts on matters of greater importance. However we are not engaged in any major research and our forgetfulness most often causes time lost in searching.
Once in a Eureka moment I told my husband, “Memory is a three-step process of registration, retention and recall. We forget because we are lost in thoughts and our hand mechanically does routine things. Since the act is not registered in the brain we are not able to recall. We need to focus our minds to be ‘here and now’ and not wander to ‘then and there.” My husband said, “I don’t like to fret over small acts of forgetfulness. Let me be as I am. If I forget something, you remind me.”
With my enthusiasm punctured, I sulked and left hurriedly for work. As I approached the car, the side mirrors did not open in their usual welcoming manner and there was no beep of the door getting unlocked. Oops. I had forgotten the car key. I went up the lift, tiptoed into the house and quietly took the car key. My husband looked up from the newspaper and asked, “What did you forget?” I mumbled, “Nothing” and as I was leaving he said, “Take it easy. In these small matters, I’m not okay, you’re not okay and that’s okay.”
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