Little RS.

What is the deal with my memory? The only solid memory I have of my early childhood (defined as 0-5 years) is my Tamil teacher at Bain school holding my notebook up to the class, "Enna muthu mutha ezhudirukaa parunga!" (Handwriting like neat pearls...) and then behind the notebook she gives me one of her trademark looks and whispers, "Note cover podu!" (Wrap your notebook with cover! You know...that brown paper cover and label?)

And that's it -- the sum total of my earlier memories. What is wrong with me?!!!! My bro, L~ can remember what he cooed when he was 6 months old (Ok, that's an exaggeration but really he remembers EVERYTHING!), my mom remembers stuff clearly from when she was five years old, dad remembers swimming in the village pond and all that good stuff from his childhood. Why am I the odd one out?

I wonder if it's like some sort of weird first child genetic defect but that theory fails since my eldest perimma has an awesome memory too. I don't really know if my dad's elder brother has a good memory but I am willing to bet he does and anyway this genetic stuff comes from the mom's side mostly right (You gotta assume some stuff to prove a theory!)?

My next memory is of being extremely traumatized when we shifted to Bangalore. I would cry for days looking at the Kannada speaking newscaster and miss our dear old Shobana Ravi. I remember this really old Kannada cook/maid we had who was there more for company than any real work! I remember my cousins turning up at B'lore to spend the summer vacation with us.

And then my next memory is my Kannada teacher "helping me out" in a class test which made me feel extremely uncomfortable and she helped me out because she is also my tuition teacher. She taught her son and me together. That was when I was say 10 years old.

I remember feeling thrilled when dad announced we would be moving back to Madras! I remember mom helping me out with my Tamil Bharatiyar essay (I insisted on taking Tamil as my third language) and I remember I came first in Tamil -- yay!

So anyway, back to the original topic -- what is the deal with my head? Where are all the older thoughts and images? Is my head doing some sanity garbage collecting stuff to prevent overloading? Maybe I am thinking too many thoughts and there's only so much your brain can hold alongside memories. Do thoughts and memories actually compete for brain space? Maybe all that theory about us using like a 0.00056 % of our actual brain capacity is not applicable in my case -- where #thoughts increase exponentially with time. In any case, I am quite upset about the whole deal. It's like I lived a whole life, ok a whole 10-15% of my life without my knowledge. Was I a happy child? Who were the people around me? What actually happened?

So yeah. If you knew me when I was anywhere between 0 - 10, please do tell me. What was I like? Did I love popsicles just like r~? Was I mischievous? Charming? Obnoxious? Pretty? Mom tells me a bunch of stories about how I was as a kid but that's not really a first person account, you know? So, I reckon, if I get a sum-total of all my childhood stories from people, I can get an over-all picture of who I was as a little person.

For now, going to be in angst until next birth.

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