‘I’m Sophie,’ she said, ‘and I have the memory of an elephant.’ But then she wasn’t Sophie. She wasn’t Kara either, nor Bhakti, nor Neha, nor any of the tens of other names she was fond of linking with herself. That day, however, she was Sophie. So I will call her Sophie.

Barring forgetting her real name, Sophie could do a lot of other things that most of us won’t be able to. For instance, just read this lovely poem that she wrote one evening as she watched Gayle hit his sixes and fours in an IPL cricket match.

Out on the pitch when Gayle will hit
A ball to go flying in the stands
There will be people miles away
Bringing together both their hands!

What matters is that Sophie wrote these four lines between two sixes even as we others with a better memory were struggling to comprehend this storm on a pitch!

‘That’s a lovely poem,’ I had said.

She smiled, ‘I’ll read these lines when I am much older than I am now and will remember every little detail from this day.’

In some corner of her mind she had grasped that she was a person who was thought of as one who had a weak memory. But she was sure that this was a mere fallacy and, therefore, she was heard so often telling all around her that she had the memory of an elephant. She probably started writing her short poems and couplets in the belief that they would help her piece together her past in case all these apprehensions about her memory were indeed true.

That evening I asked her, ‘You are a bright person. Why do you think you fumble with your memory sometimes?’

She sighed and said, ‘I have no idea.’

So I decided to talk to her again next day and then try and understand if her memory lapses were indeed true or just a pretext to get something done. I asked, ‘Do you remember the last time you took some medication?’

She smiled and said, ‘This I do daily. I take my zinc supplementation daily.’

‘Zinc supplements? Why do you take zinc supplements daily?’

‘Because the doctor asked me to.’ She then looked at me in a confused sort of way. This was one question that no one had ever asked her and so she was rather eager to get into the heart of it.

It was she who sat and meandered through the internet the entire day, searching for some elusive connection of zinc supplements with her memory lapses and had a page full of rather interesting facts for me when I met her again the next evening to watch yet another IPL match.

She held the page in her hands and watched the match. No, she did not discuss anything with me and I thought it was another of her poems on that page. So, pointing to that sheet of paper I asked, ‘Another poem?’

She looked at the paper and seemed startled at what she read. She said, ‘This isn’t a poem. There are some scientific facts here that I cannot link with anything.’

I took the page from her hands and what I gathered from those notes was that zinc supplements taken over a long period of time can lead to dementia. It also had the definitions of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, brain tumour, medication intoxication, and lots of arrows linking all these terms to convert them into something very plausible and true. I showed this sheet of paper to a doctor friend the next day and after just a glance he said, ‘Rather interesting notes on not-so-frequently encountered cases of drug-induced dementia or forgetfulness. This sheet of paper clarifies some rather complex issues very well and seem to be the work of some real pro.’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘these notes were written in a few hours by a ten year old girl who cannot even remember her real name.’

‘This must be because of some trauma or wound,’ he explained, ‘such patients are then prescribed zinc supplements and sometimes this may result in reversible dementia.’

‘Reversible dementia!’ I exclaimed. Even I could understand now what may have happened. This girl must have had an accident, got zinc supplements prescribed, and gradually got hit by this dementia bug. I rushed back to the orphanage where she was and where I went every evening to baby sit the little girls there. I went straight to the administrator.

‘I have some interesting information about the girl who doesn’t remember her name.’

The administrator listened to my facts carefully and we consulted the orphanage doctor the next day. She was allowed to go on with her zinc supplements as she had a strip of those tablets in her pocket when she had strayed into their orphanage a few weeks back.

‘These supplements are now not needed anyway,’ remarked the doctor.

It is now three weeks since her supplements were stopped and every day when I reach the orphanage, I am greeted by the other girls as well this one. She still says, ‘I know you. I remember you. I have the memory of an elephant.’

And when I ask her what her name is, she says, ‘I love being Sophie.’ Now I am unable to decide if it is better to remain forgetful or to remember and prefer being forgetful.

 

forgetfullness
This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda
Arvind Passey
12 May 2013