What’s the date today?

I forgot a good friend’s birthday. The past few years, I’ve been forgetting more and more birthdays, anniversaries, and all that. Initially, I used to agonise for months on end if I forgot a date, and felt like I had committed a sin almost. Finally, sometime last year to make it official, I just said aloud to myself that I am not good at remembering dates, and have felt much better ever since. I just remember a handful of dates now, the birthdays of my parents, my bro, and a few friends, and I am quite prepared to face the fact that soon, I may forget those too.

I never was good at dates anyway. In school I hated history only because of the dates. I loved the subject otherwise. I used to have nightmares about facing a history exam consisting solely of date-related questions.

When did the British set up the East India Company? When did Shivaji attack Afzal Khan? When was the prince of whatisname country assassinated that lead to the first world war? When was the third visit of Hitler to a concentration camp? When did Roosevelt first catch a cold during the second world war? When did Churchill raise his finger in glee when he saw his favourite team bowl out the last batsman in a county cricket match, which was noted down as a V sign by historians spying on him in the stands? When did Nehru have his 50th Nehru jacket stitched?

I don’t know!!! Stop tormenting me!

Would it have made a world of difference if King Puru had been defeated a day later than the date I filled in that blank? Would Huan Tsang have not gained much knowledge if he had come a week earlier than what I wrote in the paper? Well, perhaps, yes. But why punish me for not remembering some numbers? To add to it, they clumped history and geography together in school. So even though I was so good in geography (Oh, you should have seen me wielding a globe), I always scored poorly in the combined total. Scarred my tender mind forever. And don’t even get me started on civics.

What are dates anyway? It’s the moments that matter, isn’t it? WHEN Vasco da Gama arrived at the Malabar coast is not important, I think. What’s important is how he FELT. They should ask questions related to those things. What was Churchill’s reaction when he first saw Stalin’s moustache? What about Hitler’s moustache? What lead to the perpetual scowl on his (Churchill’s) hairless face? Did he feel any solidarity with the clean-shaven Roosevelt on matters other than the war? History should give more consideration to these peoples’ feelings. They’d appreciate it.

Oh shit, I missed the due date for payment of my electricity bill!

Go away! Leave me alone.

I’m trying to squeeze a thought out of my mind. An unpleasant thought. But very stubborn, keeps coming back.

Why so? Well, it’s a bit like this I think.

Sometimes you see something perfect. If you’re lucky, you get to see it for a while. If you’re very lucky, you are even allowed to touch it. And if you’re incredibly, ridiculously lucky, you get to actually hold it, feel it, taste it.

But then of course, in keeping with the rules of Murphy et al, it gets taken away from you, just like that. Gone. And like when the light suddenly goes kaput in a dazzlingly bright room, you are left a bit disoriented and blinded, groping in the dark, but with the vision of that light still stamped on your retina like some ghost image.

But then of course, continuing with the Murphy’s law theme, the more you want to know why that happened, the more you are not given an answer. So to pass the time, you start wishing wishes. Keep visiting those painfully few moments of the past where the universe was not too hot, not too cold, just right. It’s a bit like when you are hungry for a snack and you keep going back to the refrigerator in the irrational hope that something will materialise if you opened the fridge door yet again.

So here is this thought, this question, waiting for its companion answer, refusing to believe that some questions are made one-piece, with no answer-half to them. Begone, bothersome thought! I’ve got better thoughts to think about. Like where on earth do all those actors disappear? Like that guy with the curly hair in that serial whose name I forgot, the one where everyone was after a diamond necklace, I think, with Saeed Jaffrey and Kiron Kher and Anu Agrawal and others. And Anu Agrawal for that matter, or Mohan Bhandari who I think was a good actor. Just like there is a sock universe where all the socks disappear into, I wonder if there is an actor universe.