Down the Memory Lane

Of late, I was observing a lot of autobiographical notations in the social stratosphere coming out of each and every corner. One basic fact is that the social media had created a platform for the content and does not regulate the quality of the content. Also the free cost of sharing whatever you feel like also a key psychological motivator to this massive peta and zeds bytes of data flying all over. One of the outcome of all these is the out pour of old memories intended to kindle everyone’s emotion. As a curious observer, I started my conversation with me on what it means and my own experiment with my own autobiographical memory.

That was the last two overs of the thirty over inter college cricket tournament. I came in for batting and it was against one of the cricketing power house and the fast bowlers who were ready to finish the slog overs were really quick and efficient. Paul Jawahar, was ready to start his penultimate over and we had a very decent score of hundred plus runs and another 30 plus will really make us comfortable to win. The huge size of the recourse stadium was threatening me. I took my guard, and was predetermined to hit the ball as hard and as far as possible to get the maximum runs to finish our innings. I remember seeing his start of the run up and was focussing on his delivery. The moment the ball left his hand, M worked on my feet , stepped up and scooped the ball per mid-on with all my power. The sound the impact made was so sweet and I was sure, the ball will be on air for a while; and as look up, the ball sailed so high, so long and crossed to long-on fielder on the boundary line and landed well clear of him. The whole stadium erupted in disbelief. No one was thinking a rookie batsmen would hit the star bowler so hard and good.That shot must have created a strength in me and might have shattered Paul’s confidence. The rest of the over, I hit another two towering sixes and a boundary took the total for that over to 26 runs. The final over was was also hit for another 20 runs. We

crossed 160 runs and set an impossible target for the opponents. As I walked out that day off the ground, within my college I had the ‘Sixer’ adjective added to my name; My friend used to ask after every game, how much did I score, and even if I said four, his next question would be how many sixers I had in that. Even basic mathematics were not not taken into consideration. That night my close friend and well wisher Sowmy was walking with me talking about that game and he said, I wish I’d one day score at least a sixer in race course stadium, as I did. 

I smiled at him and said, “If that happens I’d not be in this country!”

Down the memory lane is a slippery slope, and I was resisting writing this for a long time. The fear is for one very simple reason, how trustworthy is my memory is; for that matter for all humans. For the very basic fact, Human memory is so error prone. Memory errors fall into two classes: people can 

• either completely fail to recall an event or 
• have an inaccurate recollection.

It is more accurate to speak of human memories rather than of human memory, since people have several distinctly different types. The basic division is among sensory, short-term and long-term memories. Each of these memories further consists of subsystems. There is a separate sensory memory for each sense, iconic (visual), echoic (auditory), etc. Some also distinguish a "working memory" consisting of separate executive, phonological loop and visuo-spatial subsystems.

Many a times, when you write about your childhood, depend on accuracy of long-term memory, which has at least two subsystems, implicit and explicit memory. Implicit memory stores things that you don't consciously know, like how to peddle a bike. You just get on the thing and start peddling without conscious thought. 

Explicit memory stores things that you can consciously verbalize. Explicit memory further subdivides into semantic and autobiographical types. Semantic is memory for facts. For example, you know that Nehru was the first prime minister of India but probably don't remember the exact circumstances when you learned that fact. Similarly, you may remember the gist of a conversation that you had a year ago, but don't remember the exact words that were used. Introspectively, semantic memory is more like "knowing" than like recalling. It's not so much that I recall Nehru being the first prime minister as I know that Nehru was the first president. In contrast, autobiographical memory is recollection of events or episodes in you life. You remember exactly what was said and the actual, physical details.

It is impossible, however, to get far in discussing memory, however, without first dispelling the homunculus fallacy. Most people intuitively imagine that perception and memory work something like this: the eyes are TV cameras that project a picture of the world to an inner screen. In the head, there is a little man, the "homunculus," who views the screen and perceives the world. Memory is simply a videotape recording of what we have seen on the screen. To remember, we simply rewind the tape, and the little man sees the pictures again. Of course, there is no little man, no screen and no videotape. The fallacy of this model should be obvious: Who is seeing the image in the head of the homunculus? There would have to be another, smaller homunculus in the head of the first homunculus and so on in infinite regress.

Fifteen years before I remember when I was in a project in Denver, on a nice and clear night, I was standing outside in my balcony and looking at the snow clad peaks of Rocky mountains and the Pikes peak wondering the beauty of the creation. The phone rang and the call was from India; I was puzzled to see the number which was not familiar to me, and picked it up. It was Sowmy, with a great excitement and exuberance all over his voice. He said “Siva, I scored my first century in today’s match and you know what, I scored two towering sixes on the very same race course grounds”. I smiled and the breeze with mild chillness of the Mile High city blew over me!