The Violence of Memory

Death is one of the most philosophised concepts across history. Socrates had said, ‘To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not.’ Nietzsche believed that there is a right time to die and he says he condemns all to ‘his’ kind of death. 

But there is something more cruel, immoral, beautiful and more philosophical, yet a tad less philosophised than death. Memory, the absence as well as the presence of which makes us more human.

Earlier this month, I lost an aunt to age-related complications. She fought valiantly, in the ICU, for two months before death finally took over. My uncle, her husband, is a well-known historian of mediaeval India. He’s 93 years old and is devastated at the loss of his partner of 63 years. But there’s a small caveat to his mourning. 

He has early onset age-induced memory loss and forgets events from the recent past. His memory of past events, both joy and sorrow, is as clear as daylight. Recent events, including the death of his wife, are cloudy and patchy. He forgets things which are otherwise casual and trivial remembrances for us – his phone number, address, what he ate for lunch and so on.  Interestingly, he remembers the menu of the shahi dastarkhan of emperor Shahjahan. The passcode to his smartphone is the date of Akbar’s coronation, 1556. And yet he forgets that his beloved wife is no more. Even more painful is the fact that the mention of her death reignites this memory and every time she’s brought in, he mourns her with equal zest and sorrow as if it has happened a few minutes ago. Her death remains brand new to him.

Nothing compares to this violence of memory or rather a lack of it. 

British Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky had once said, “If there is any substitute for love, its memory. To memorise, then, is to restore intimacy.” What Brodsky failed to enumerate was that it is this intimacy which not only replaces love, but also makes us hate. If loss of memory makes one an angel, the reinforcement of it makes us a devil. This month saw more killings in Gaza, and back home bail was granted to those accused of killing Gauri Lankesh. The perpetual violence of memory on the mothers of Gaza and on the family members of Gauri is beyond our comprehension. To live every day with the horrible memory of your loved ones being brutalised is like being stung by a thousand scorpions.

The horrors of mass violence – whether it be of the 1947 Partition, 1984 Delhi or of 2002 Gujarat – lies not only in its acute heartless organisation and form but also in its enduring memory. The perpetrators know well that the construction of mass violence is beyond the limits of physical brutality. A large part of it leads to a frequent mental time travel by its victim. This time travel or memory becomes a part of one’s being. A perpetual argument of collective memory has been forwarded to what I feel is the trivialisation of mass murders and genocides. Collective memory is not everlasting and nor is it indispensable. Individual memory is. Collective memory is a tool of concocting time and events and is used to create what is called a dialogic truth. Individual memory is most importantly unalterable, the truth and nothing but the truth. 

The grant of bail to the murder accused of Gauri Lankesh is not an isolated instance of justice gone wrong. Bilquis Bano’s rapists and the murderers of her family were granted bail recently. Justice is both the tool to reinforce and erase memory. The sole purpose of justice is closure. But a manipulated legal system can open the veins of memory and bleed the victim pale. Justice in such cases, thus appears to become the sole proprietor of individual memory. Luckily, flashes of memory help the victim. My uncle’s flashes of his wife’s memory make us flinch but actually it’s important that he remembers her now and then. He needs closure. His internalisation of her death is essential for his mental well-being. Memory is surely a violent but an essential gizmo of human existence.

The world in which we live today is unique in many violent ways. The authorisation of the ongoing genocide in Gaza under the garb of retaliation is what we have been reduced to. Violence marks our existence. Unfortunately, the greater the violence, the stronger the memory. Studies have shown that the human brain remembers sadness more than joy, hate more than love. Every child killed in Gaza, every house destroyed, is an indelible memory. 

Someone rightly said, memory is the thing you forget with. The violent world in which we live is best forgotten. My uncle’s situation doesn’t seem so bad after all.

The violence which memory induces reminds me of a study from the University of Sheffield in UK which showed that robins in urban areas are now singing at night because it is too noisy during the day. If robins can memorise silence and quiet, why can’t we? Their memories are uncomplicated, unencumbered by philosophy. They use instinct to memorise. Humans need to evolve to reach that state, of being in devastating love with nature including for other humans. For the memory of every Gauri Lankesh, we need to carve out hope and dream from the darkness of the night. We need to memorise love and stand on the promontory of truth so that every star becomes a witness, every dream a testimony and every memory a fact.