The memory game

Many of my friends brag about their children’s capability to identify cars from a distance. Some are such experts that they can name a car just by its engine sound. I am impressed. I am glad that children have developed such memory. Even I was fascinated by, if not obsessed with,  cars during my childhood days. The list of cars was small Ambassador, Maruti 800, Fiat, Premier Padmini, and Contessa Classic. Hence identifying them was not considered as a memory prowess. Also, there was no way for us get to know about cars other than those that were on the streets. There were no weekly magazines dedicated to cars, no internet, no huge billboards with insecure men standing next to huge cars, no car games on the computer or smartphones.

Even Srushti, my niece, will start identifying cars and we might all start bragging about it. Identifying soon become a norm and not a talent. What would be nice for children (and elders) is to identify plants and trees around them, and the stars above them. I walk past trees without knowing their names. They are there in the same place all the time, smiling at me, and greeting me with their shade. But I am this rude person who does not care to even know their names. I take them for granted. I have been walking under the starlit sky ever since my birth. But I can hardly identify any constellation. I don’t know the birds those chirping birds or names of the moths and butterflies that hover over the flowers in my garden.

Unless I get connected to the nature around me, I might not observe the changes in it. I easily recognize the sickness in a friend but not in stranger. Nature should no longer remain a stranger to me. I want to be re-introduced to it through Srushti. I hope the two of us will be able to develop stronger bonds with nature. I hope we both realize how diverse nature is and how boring man-made things can get.