Some part of us, at some point, decides to share a core memory with another person. This is never as casual as it seems. Do they still have the memories? Did it affect them?
It is just surprising that I haven't written any personal stuff here. I have always believed politics to be an extension of our personality and character -- a complicated perspective, since affect matters, and one that sits uneasily within our current culture of constant self-discovery and optimisation. But there is always a balance to these seemingly distinct aspects of life. Most of us miss this because we simply don't want to believe that when one talks about politics, one is also talking about the self. And no, I am not writing about me per se -- though my own experiences enrich the writing -- but more about how we sustain the self, the self as a belief system.
Now, there are moments in life that ask you to introspect. This is mostly because we need assurances. To a completely convinced person, things are simple. But to an unconvinced person, things are complicated. After all, you do not ask for advice from your friends if you are absolutely sure about the thing that you want to do. Put simply, you need help to reach clarity. Mind you, this is also about beliefs and convictions. With memories, things get complicated. Some part of us gets somehow convinced to share a core memory with a person. And by doing this, we clearly are trying to revisit our convictions about ourselves. Moreover, we are also trying to project a self that successfully negotiated its constitution between the memory and the present state. A memory shared and received becomes different from a memory only held. Here, the other person's reaction doesn't just receive the self you're projecting, it partially determines what that self becomes next. So in remembering (an active activity that remixes events/people in memories), we tend to create the self in all its vulnerability, with respect to our present state. So the question of whether, in sharing our memories, we are helping ourselves or the other person becomes very important here. And the answer is both. Because memories could help us in gauging personality, depth, and character.
And yet, sharing one's memories with another person can become an activity of introspection: an introspection that comes at the moment of sharing, and again after that moment itself becomes a memory. Personally, there are memories of other people that stayed with me even after they left me. There is something particular about memories left behind by people who are no longer there. They carry a weight that your own memories don't. Now these memories are as part of my self as my own memories. These snippets have become mine, and yes, the irony is that the people who left it in me are no more there with me. The real tragedy is that when I accepted these memories into me, I thought the person(s) who shared these, would play a part in my life for a long time. Now that the person(s) have left, their memories stay, refusing to leave. And the act of remembering them sharing it stays with you too. And yes, as janus-faced things are, I also think about my own memories that I have shared with them. Do they still have it? Did it have any effect on them? Did the memory of me sharing my memory stay with them? All these concerns shape who I am becoming.
Yes, shared memories can feel confusing if the one who shared it with you is no longer with you. These memories stay in limbo, neither out nor in. They don't completely integrate into who you are now, but they don't dissolve either; they just sit there, occasionally surfacing, reminding you of a version of yourself that believed certain people were permanent. This takes me to Ben Lerner's latest novel, 'Transcription'. In it, there is a line that describes the fate of unsent messages. He writes, "I don’t understand where a message lingers, or for how long, when there isn’t a device to receive it." Even when the context is different, this maps onto memories with uncomfortable precision.
And yet, there is some comfort in knowing others have felt the same. I found that comfort when Lerner wrote something I had once thought myself. "You asked me a beautiful question when you were a child: Were there dreams before cinema? And then: Were there color dreams before color film? The last thing you do with such a question is answer it" (Transcription). As someone who loved films back when I was a kid (still do), I still remember asking my mother the same question. And I still don't remember my mother's response. But I remember the question -- and yes, the answer doesn't matter.
Furthermore, memories never stay private; they become social. Just as personal memory is never an innocent recovery but a reconstruction shaped by who we are now, collective political memory is always a selective archive, and our politicians are its most self-serving editors. And nowhere is this more formal than in legislative assemblies, where the 'microclimate of conviviality' creates our common political memories. Recently, in the Kerala Assembly, Opposition leader, Pinarayi Vijayan proudly stated the soviet role in stopping Nazism. In a sense, comrade Pinarayi was reliving the old communist nostalgia of Stalinist Russia. The Chief Minister VD Satheesan responded by resorting to the old liberal argument of equalising Nazism, Fascism and Communism. They are both right and wrong. The social memory of how one understands Stalinism is the underlying logic here. It is undeniable that Soviet Russia played a crucial role in defeating the Nazi army. It is also undeniable that Communism was and is always against Fascism. But the soviet memories are not limited to jubilant battle cries. It was also about totalitarianism and the merciless state-sponsored violence that it spawned. And what of the Congress party: will Satheesan also take into consideration the history of totalitarianism and Fascism in his own party? Will he care to explain how the totalitarian Indira regime was completely democratic and anti-fascist to the Opposition leader, who himself was a victim of the Emergency era excesses? Therefore, the clarity afforded to memories is never neutral - it is always managed, and the extent to which people in power control that management becomes a crucial factor in how we do politics.
Ultimately, as Lerner writes, "politics happen when we sit around the fire and make the dream memories (my addition) social". As long as our memories are managed by certain interests, our politics eventually becomes rooted in lies and deceit. The anti-politics that it generates also breaks apart the microclimate of conviviality in our political institutions.
In View
This week, I am sharing a particular snapshot from the film 'Sorry, Baby' (2025). The striking feature of this scene is the random beauty of a stranger walking into the protagonist's life. Since I have written about how people come and go but their memories stay on, this scene highlights exactly that. We do not see the stranger leaving after this scene - the editor cuts straight to an exterior shot. He leaves, but we never see it. He leaves, but we never see it. This is such a beautiful scene depicting how sweet and strange randomness can be. If you haven't watched 'Sorry, Baby', please do. 5/5
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