A few days back and i would have agreed with u but recently i read a report that the reason people lose memory in old age is because they spend their entire life trying so hard to forget bad memories that at their age their brain cells decide not to remember at all. abb kahiye bhoolna achcha ya bura?

i visit your diary regularly and had been wanting to say this…. U WRITE TOOO GOOD! keep up the good work. AAP SE BAHUT KUCH SEEKHNE KO MILA. SHUKRIYA

Thanks Ayesha

And about that report you read: well, I guess I agree with my Taya ji too. What I think now is that a person should be able to recover from bad memories; if not, then it’s better to forget them …

Easier said than done, right?

erm…i wanted to comment but forgot! talk of short memories!

ooooh, someone visited me??! thanku

the latest case of bad memories i encountered 5min ago….. my bro. tell y do ONLY men have bad memories :/

ladies r a walky talky calender, can remember anything from birthdays to the day their husbands first forgot their keys after their marriage…. haan yeh bhi ke they keep forgetting the price of everything. but that is irrelevent.

hmmm… this place looks familiar…have i been here before? i forget! awrite…i have been goofing…but i really wanted to say something but can’t. simply because i don’t know how to put it in words, neither angrezi, nor urdu nor the tooti phooti punjabi i know. I know now, when you mention driving around with your mom and dad and taya?taee ji…me misses home…and me tries me level best to forget it

Sub choro, do u know bout khalil J’z girlfrend?

Khalil J’s girlfriend?

Khalil Jibrans girls……two o them!!!

Hi Saadat!

I’ve done some studying on post trumatic stress, and one thing they have found is that war veterans who remember events more accurately do not adjust very well after the events that caused them.

The veterans who do adjust back into life in a healthy manner have actually altered memories which are not as extreme or bad as the situations actually were.

In my faith they say, ‘the truth shall set you free,’ however it doesn’t seem to be in this case.

Thanks for an interesting post. I’m a big forgetter.

this is in relation with laura’s comment about war veterans coping with their traumatic experiences.

it never ceases to amaze me how war veterans in my country (who fought against the japanese on world war II) would still rise up and salute whenever they see an airplane flying by and would still cower in fear whenever they hear the sound of choppers flying nearby.

this behavior has something to do with the memories these things (choppers, planes) evoke.

because of the great trauma they have endured, they are still haunted by the memories of the past, and are still fixated in it.

uh, did i just make sense? i’m not sure.

Laura and your taya ji had better answers on two different things, according to what I have learnt in recent past. Being an editor/designer of an online zine, I got a report from a french lady who has been studying Alzheimer’s disease affects on people from varied cultures beside having extensive background on Parkinson’s disease etc. The report could not be published for some odd reasons, but it taught me many things that Business Week and LA times’ recent reports couldn’t answer.
At age 40, your car keys may disappear and your checkbook may occasionally wander off. You may search the parking lot arguing loudly that a thief has made off with your car rather than admit you can’t remember where you parked. People experience short term memory loss when they age. But what Laura and Anne reported’s got to do with Long term memory (good or bad, thats not the point for now) By midlife, you may occasionally have trouble accessing a memory because you have accumulated a lot of them. It’s as if you can’t get “through” because your “party line” is busy. Now I dont actually remember the statistics given by recent BW report on the victims of these memory related disorders/diseases, but it seemed pretty natural from its source that people of old age forget easily.
Surprisingly, stress releases a hormone called cortisol that is deadly to brain cells. Now that explains what you and Laura had in minds. But I would keep my thoughts ending here for the same reason I couldn’t add that insightful report in my zine sadly.
All the best

Laura, Anne, and Ejaz Asi: Thanks a lot for sharing all this. I was also thinking today (and let us hope that I remember what I thought ) that memory and painful events are tightly related, though sometimes one dominates the other. I was certainly talking about long-term memories with my Taya ji, which may keep on producing stress for you. Other thing I read somewhere is that our brain remembers everything we have concentrated on, though we may not recall it due to the level of our concentration. Stressful situations certainly make a person to get distracted from anything else, thus increasing the concentration (I don’t know if this word should be used here). But anyway, I guess it’s the job of those doctors and psychologists to do their research, so let’s hope they can come up with a theory or something (or may be they already have).

And Anne, now I wonder if I made sense!

Something like… takes a second to like someone, a lifetime to forget them. I hate that about memories. The bad ones just STICK like glue. But the good thing about forgetting good memories is.. sometimes Im reading through an old diary where I’ve written something someone said, and it makes me burst into laughter and feel good for days. Ah.. beautiful =)

Ejaz Asi, u r talkin about the same article that i m talkin about. i read that same thing in THE NEW INDIA EXPRESS friday edition two weeks or so back.
Saadat, well we made a full circle… we started with memory loss and stress and end with memory loss and …. stress
talkin about memory (again), do u know dat Sherlock Holmes did not know that the world was round? wn he found out he just wanted to forget it cause according to him, ur brain is like a room with walls. Walls dont expand and hence if u store unwanted info, ur memory (room) will be cluttered with unwanted stuff leaving the really important ones out.

Bushra: Good memories are really beautiful. And I guess they’re the ones which should stick like glue!

Ayesha: I knew there had to be something weird about Shelock Holmes! But I don’t agree with his brain-room theory. I think that our brain is capable of remembering everything … and that its walls can expand (and contract, in case you want to forget something) dynamically!

(do you suffer from long-term memory loss?)

(I don’t remember…)

saadat, i found out that there are ppl who can beat your blog absencse record by a month! think they have forgotten that theyactually have a blog to update?

Abez: I also don’t remember if I suffer from long-term memory loss …

AWK: Oh well, I am no Iqbal who set up an un-beatable record! By the way, I would like to visit those people’s blog/journals

What? u still driving?..ruk jao bhai…take it easy now…..The rose remebered its owner..

arrey can i read something else now. saadat kya hua….. kab tak memory loose karogey?
ok another thing on memory. what you read today u remember only 1/8 at the end of a week.

Salam! Talk of short memories, well, sharp memories are better, its only u 2 decide wat to gain from them, always remember to forget the things which made u sad, but never forget to remember the moments which made u glad, thats all i can account 4 sharp memories. I m against ur point in favour of short memories just becoz of this. (Do I act upon it? thats another issue)

Mani: *taking it easy* and the rose … nah, “forget” it!

Aysha: You’ll read more when I remember to write smomething!

TJ: Wa-alaikum-us-Salam! I don’t know if I favour short or sharp memories (may be sharp memories, I guess). But what I think is that a person should be able to forget things he/she wants to (and thus creating a disaster. Just imagine missing our exams only because we didn’t want to remember anything about them!)

im like all lost…im slow i know lol

where were you driving to Saadat? havent you reached your destination yet?

Fish is suppose to help.

right? or Milk. Something.

Probably cashews.

No no, fish – good for memory. Go find a Bengali friend and rock on w/ the fish

Sal: Good for you that you know yourself. I am always struggling with knowing myself!

AWK: Let’s say that the tires got punctured

Mademoiselle: Too bad I’m fasting right now. Will try to get fish at iftar

hey sadaat you better make this post a memory now …UPDATE time !…

Attention ladies and no longer gentlemen. This is to announce that honorable blogger, and the creator of this wondrous blog, Ulta Seedha has succumbed to his last entry on memory loss. he was last reported to be snooping around others’ blog, urging for an update. Jisse bhi dikhe is pate per bhijwade. Khud parhe to sharafat se wapas aa jae, usse kuch nahin kaha jaae ga!

Hahahahahaha … *rolling on floor laughing*