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Question
Will you sympathize or ridicule someone who is intensely forgetful? Write an essay justifying your point of view.
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Solution
Forgetfulness, if deemed a form of freedom, must be welcome. But what one forgets matters. Similar to the father who forgot the baby in the perambulator if one forgets main duties, he would become an anathema to even family members. I wouldn’t be hasty to ridicule a person who “suffers” from acute or intense forgetfulness. I would observe, in the first place, what are the items he forgets routinely. Are they trifles or serious things? If a married man forgets his wife and children and forgets his filial duties, then he deserves chastisement and not ridicule.
If forgetting leads to comic situations like wearing chappals on the wrong foot or wearing the tie in a funny manner, sometimes a person of extraordinary intelligence may forget his residential address similar to Einstein. Scientists and great philosophers like Socrates and Rabindranath Tagore suddenly went into spells of deep contemplation totally forgetting where they were heading to. Once it so happened that Socrates went into a trance on a road. His disciples and friends stood around him the whole day. Night came. Friends bought mats and pillows and slept around him hoping to listen to his words of wisdom as soon as the spell breaks and remembers what he saw in his world of imagination.
Towards dawn, the spell broke. Socrates saw the people sleeping around him. He just carefully walked back home. I have my heart-felt sympathies for my friends who study just before the examination and forget what they learned in the examination hall. I’ve my conviction that those who forget naturally need to be treated with a sympathetic understanding because they really don’t know that they forget. Those who suffer from selective amnesia, I mean politicians who give tall promises before elections but remember to forget them soon after winning the elections need to be ridiculed by funny cartoons and in public places because they have done a breach of trust.
“There is some pleasure even in words when they bring forgetfulness of present miseries.”
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Take this five-minute memory test. The teacher will read out a series of 30 words, one by one. Some of them will be repeated. Whenever you hear a word for the first time, write ‘N’ (for New) in the corresponding box, and when you hear a repeated word write ‘R’. After completing this task, check your results. Compare it with your friends and see where you stand.
| 1 | N | 11 | 21 | ||
| 2 | 12 | 22 | |||
| 3 | 13 | 23 | |||
| 4 | 14 | 24 | |||
| 5 | 15 | 25 | |||
| 6 | 16 | 26 | |||
| 7 | 17 | 27 | |||
| 8 | 18 | 28 | |||
| 9 | 19 | 29 | |||
| 10 | 20 | 30 |
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At times, instances of forgetfulness may land us in a tight spot or in a difficult situation. Therefore, we need to find ways to remember what we have to do or carry with us. One suchway is to make a mental checklist that we can verify before starting any activity.
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| e.g. setting an alarm | |
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| a) The narrator had only 63 pounds with him and did not know how to manage the situation. | |
| b) The narrator thought of all his relations from whom he could borrow. | |
| c) Unfortunately he had made the highest bid. | |
| d) The narrator entered Christie’s as his friend persuaded him to visit the saleroom. | |
| e) Every time someone else made a higher bid and the narrator was not caught. | |
| f) The narrator on a sudden impulse added 50 more guineas, to the amount offered. | |
| g) His friend joined him then but left immediately unable to control his laughter. | |
| h) He even thought of borrowing from moneylenders and considered the possibility of confessing the truth to the staff at Christie’s. | |
| i) The picture was declared sold to the narrator. | |
| j) After some time a picture was put up and a bid for 4000 guineas was raised. | |
| k) A sudden stroke of luck befell the narrator when he heard that the gent who had made the bid of 4000 guineas would offer him the additional 50 guineas and buy the picture. | |
| l) The narrator kept bidding just for fun. | |
| m) The picture was given away to the other bidder and the narrator was saved from humiliation. | |
| n) His friend had left the place roaring with laughter at the narrator’s predicament. | |
| o) The narrator was quite happy at the offer but demanded 100 guineas instead of the 50. Now there was no need for him to make any payment. |
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