Have you ever wished for your life to change drastically for good? Like say some day, God decides you have had enough struggles in your life and decides to grant you 3 wishes and suddenly your life becomes magically perfect? Well… who doesnt? No matter how unrealizable it is at the moment, still nobody stops wishing for things they have been dying to have all their life. Like that promotion at work, or some lottery with which you can buy the house of your dreams, or redo your house you have long been wanting to do, or even buy the beautiful diamond jewellery you have been eyeing in the mall but putting off everytime since that is not the priority at the moment. Or even say dropping 2 jean sizes overnight.
How would it feel if suddenly you have all those things you could ever wish for but dont exactly recollect getting it. Like your life changed overnight and all of a sudden you have everything you wished for but lost the memory of achieving it? Say you forgot all the struggles you had to go through to get to your goal. Well nobody would really want to remember the tougher days in ones life. We always try to put those things behind and look at the brighter side of life. But can you really do with forgeting a sizable portion of your memory?
Well… this is the case of Lexi Smart, the main character in one of the book I just finished reading. “Remember Me?” is the book written by Sophie Kinsella. The story is about a 28 year old woman named Lexi Smart who meets with an accident and has 3 years of her memory wiped off. She suddenly goes from a 25 year old struggling working girl to the director of the same company she was working for. To her biggest surprise she looks much prettier than she remembered herself to be and also has a gorgeous, drop dead, multimillionaire husband. Seems kind of like a dream come true for her untill she realizes she doesnt remember even a zilch of how she got to be what she is. Even precious moments like meeting her husband for the first time or her wedding day are only left to her imagination from other peoples descriptions. She doesnt even remember if she really loves him. What follows is her struggle to put together pieces of her life that are missing from her memory.
Not that I am severely unhappy with my life at present, but for a brief moment while reading the synopsis of the book I did wish, how wonderful if that happens to me. Not exactly the discover-I-have-a-new-handsome-husband part coz I already have one whom I love to death, but say for starters, I no longer have to put up with the annoying people at work and even better I am their boss now. And I dont have go through any struggle or remember going through any to become the boss and it just feels like life changed for better overnight. I kind of drifted in my very own fairy tale untill i reached to the part in the book where Lexi tries so hard to remember her husband and all the relationship that they share. And a sudden fear gripped me. Ignore the life-gets-magically-perfect part. What if I dont get any of that and still lose my memory. How horrible could that be if one fine day few years of my life are washed from my memory and I forget my marriage or even forget my husband. Still shuddering from the thought I immediately went to Hubby and made him promise he would never give up on me if that ever happened to me, no matter how long he had to wait for my memory to come back. He obliged feeling quiet surprised, completely oblivious to where i was coming from. And true, these incidents are not very common. But reading a book like this makes you stop and think what really must be going on in the life of the person to whom such things do happen? I mean we have seen a lot of similar plots in movies where suddenly in the climax the memory eventually comes back. But what about real life? Is it always the same in real life too?
Sometimes I forget to carry my lunch box or leave my cell phone at home. I feel so pathetic to forget stuff I do daily that I cannot begin to comprehend how sad it would be for people who actually forget who they are. I remember a friend’s mom had suffered from memeory loss. Not due to some accident but something else. My friend was then in the final year of engineering while his mom thought he was still in the the 10th standard. How difficult it must have been for her to accept that she knows nothing about 6 years of her only son’s life. A lot must have happened in those 6 years and everything erased.
Science might have devised ways to treat such losses and there might be family and friends to help. But can any amount of compassion make up for the loss? Can it bring back the memories the person has lost? Something we get busy building all our life. Can we really remember it the same way we used to, if it is narrated by someone else? Can it really be called a memory if you only remember it as told by someone and not remember making it? Can one really recover if God accidentally pressed a shift-delete on important logs from the brain’s hard disk?
I read that book and love all her books.Its so easy reading. Another fav chick lit author of mine is Meg Cabot, in case you are looking to add..:)
me: I have started liking her too. Soon will start her “Can You Keep A Secret”. Will check out Meg Cabot.
And I want my 3 wishes.
1.Enough money to retire in style
2. Sucessful, brilliant children
3. Age in style, ie no sagging chicken feet wrinkles.
Is that too much to ask?
me: Granted
I read this post in a breeze and could not comprehend it properly. will read it properly again. But the Boy had a partial memory loss when he was doing his graduation and he is really scared of those days. When he could not recognise his parents. 😦
me: well… i didnt understand where i was going with it either while writing it… Started as an amusing thought after reading the first chapters of the book but as i read further realised it is no joke to be happy about losing ones memory.
Book sound interesting..these days my wishlist for books is increasing by leap and bound 🙂
in a way memory loss turned out to be for lexi….i would be happiest person if it happens to me too :lol::lol: 😆 😆
me: So you would think initially… like me. Read the book to find out what happened next.
No nested reply?
Anyways, that one is hilarious is well. The Can You keep a secret.
Her Shopaholic series is fun..
me: I am already reading that.. At work 🙂 Can you believe it??? I will get to the shopoholic too and let me go figure out how to enable the nested reply.
Thought provoking. I haven’t read Sophie Kinsella, but I have a suspicion that there are mirroring facilities in our brain that we probably do not know enough about, today, scientifically.
If you have read Dr Brian Weiss, and his stuff about previous lives, you start wondering where all those memories are archived in a human brain, and why we only experience repercussions of those, in our day-to-day relationships etc. So I think its really a switch that is pulled and not a Shift-del.
V V intriguing ….
me: True, human brain is still a big mistery to a certain extent. Previous lives is another thing that has intrigued me till now. Will definitely go through Dr Brian Weiss’ work.
hiiii enchyyy!!
i haven’t read the post yet. am at work. thought of you. dropped by to say hello!!!!! will read once i get a few mins! 🙂
wow.. you stopped by after a long time Roop…
Came back to your blog to check if you have updated it (sometimes my Google reader does not function properly) and re read this post.
Lexi Smart sounds like the name of a pen no? hehe! Sorry dont intened to hurt anyone but there is a ballpoint pen in India with the same name. 🙂
Sirf paanch rupaye mein!
he he.. yeah it does sound like a pen name. But then even Reynolds is a valid last name here 🙂