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Dhruv Saxena
My mother can tell you the name of every teacher I had from class one through class twelve.
Not just the names. The subjects. The specific things they said. The assessment each one made of me that she agreed with or disagreed with and why. The teachers she liked and the ones she had reservations about and the one in class seven whose teaching method she felt was ineffective and communicated to the school, politely but clearly, with me sitting next to her.
I cannot remember most of these teachers. I have a general impression of class seven but the specific teacher's name is gone. My mother has the name, the subject, the specific feedback from two parent-teacher meetings, and the follow-up she conducted after the second meeting.
She has this for every year of my education. Twelve years. Multiple teachers per year. Cross-referenced with specific incidents, specific remarks, specific moments she considered significant. The archive is complete and immediately accessible. She can retrieve any item from it without effort.
I asked her recently what her doctor's name was. She is seeing a specialist for something minor. I asked, in the context of checking in on how the appointment had gone, who the doctor was.
She said she could not remember off the top of her head.
I said the appointment was last week.
She said she had the name written down somewhere.
I sat with this information for a moment.
She has the name of my class seven teacher, who I have not seen in twenty years and whose name I could not tell you if you paid me, in immediate memory. She does not have the name of the doctor she saw last week.
I was home at the time of this conversation. We were at the kitchen table, chai between us, Mom's Magic biscuits on the plate, and I asked her why she thought this was. She said she had a lot to keep track of. I said her doctor seemed like important information to keep track of. She said she had it written down. I said that was not the same as remembering it. She picked up her chai.
The conversation ended there. I have been thinking about it since.
The Archive She Keeps
The archive my mother maintains about my life is comprehensive in a way that my own memory of my life is not.
She remembers things I have forgotten. Not just teachers. The name of my best friend in class three who I have not thought about in decades. The specific thing a relative said at a family event in 2004 that I was present for and have no recollection of. The first time I came home with a bad grade and what I said when she asked about it and what she said back and how it resolved.
I have a general impression of my childhood. She has specific episodes, in sequence, with dialogue.
My friend Nikhil tested this once. He went home and asked his mother to tell him about his first day of school. She told him. She remembered what he wore. She remembered what he ate for breakfast. She remembered the expression on his face when he walked to the gate and turned back to look at her. She remembered what she did after he disappeared through the gate, which was stand at the gate for a few more minutes before going back inside.
He did not remember his first day of school at all. She remembers it as if it happened recently, because for her it did happen recently, in the sense that the things that matter most do not really recede.
The Things She Forgets
The forgetting is also real and also follows a pattern.
She forgets things that are exclusively about her. Her doctor's name. Her own appointment times. The name of the medication she has been prescribed and the specific instructions that came with it. The details of her own life that do not involve any of us.
She is very good at remembering things that are relevant to someone else. She will remember my father's appointments, my sister's schedule, what I told her I was working on and whether I mentioned a deadline. She will remember the name of my friend's mother who she met once at a family event and who mentioned something about her health that my mother has been thinking about since.
She will not remember her own doctor's name.
My friend Karan noticed this about his mother and described it as the priority inversion. She has inverted the standard hierarchy of what information is worth retaining. Most people prioritise information about themselves. His mother prioritises information about everyone else. Her own information sits at the bottom of the stack and gets retrieved last, or not at all.
He said he tried to explain to her once that her own health information was important. She said she knew it was important, she had it written down. He said writing it down was not the same as knowing it. She looked at him with the expression of someone who has heard a reasonable point and has decided it does not change anything.
The Reason
I have thought about the reason and I think it is this.
My mother has spent thirty-one years collecting and maintaining information about my life because my life was her primary responsibility and the information was how she discharged the responsibility well. The archive is professional-grade because it was built for professional purposes. She was doing a job and she did it with the care of someone who took the job seriously.
Her own information does not have the same urgency. She is not responsible for herself in the same way. Nobody depends on her remembering her doctor's name. The consequences of forgetting her doctor's name are inconvenient but manageable. The consequences of forgetting my class seven teacher's name were, in her framework, potentially more significant because the class seven teacher's assessment was relevant to decisions she was making about my education.
The archive is ordered by importance to us. Her own details rank below ours because she has always ranked herself below us.
This is the thing about Indian mothers that I find hardest to sit with. The self-ranking. The consistent placement of herself at the bottom of the priority list, so automatic and so complete that she does not notice she is doing it.
She has the class seven teacher's name. She does not have her doctor's name.
I have written the doctor's name in her phone. Under a contact called Doctor, first name. I have also written the appointment schedule and the medication details.
She will probably not check the phone. She will write it down somewhere else.
But I have put it there.
It felt like the least I could do.
