Do the memories lose their meaning?

I was trying to prepare for a potential "behavioural" interview and realized that 5 years is a long time in erasing minute details of what you did and how. Not the bigger details are erased, like the name of a research project or how I or others went about it; but I couldn't remember how much each segment or a project was developed by me each day and such other things; whether I had faced little problems along the way. Somehow, each of those research projects in my years of working as an RA is striking me as a big jumbled up mass. Probably I'm aging or probably they didn't matter to me.... as that's how memories are supposed to be stowed in our brains. We don't usually remember what happened each day in the past year but we do remember the random moment 5 years back when we liked some brilliant bag of a random co-passenger or that striking face in the escalator or how we missed someone on hearing a certain song or how we were late for a certain day at work or even how we felt the moon was walking with us when we used to walk as kids and look up in the sky and so on....

And then, I came across these:




Pictures that brought back my whole childhood....pictures that provide warmth and memories of almost living in our little ambiotic sacs; when it was okay to stare at these while flipping through the newspaper or "Anandamela" or while it was definitely not okay to gaze at them in our restricted sessions of "Anandalok", "Stardust" and the likes. The "advertise" before the Saturday or Sunday movies when TV equalized Doordarshan were always preferred palatable pleasures, especially when one had to start studying for classwork due on Mondays; in addition to them, however, these print media advertisements were always gazed upon starry eyed.....on the stars in them.

And even then, I had lost, on my memories that is, the sooo-privileged-to-be-so dewy eyed Anuradha Patel, of being associated with anything else other than "Mera kuchh samaan" or ...Ijazaat....or her being the granddaughter of Ashok Kumar. But here she is, making me wonder how did I even forget that this toothpaste existed once upon a time? Well, to paraphrase Nietzsche (with all the due apologies to be used in such profane situations like this)...some things do not come to mind when we want them; but, when they do.....they touch us with their irrevocable molten comforting powers.
Though, I guess.....none of us could forget, arguably, our first childhood crush, about whom nothing else was known except him coming from the illustrious filmy family panning over generations. The picture on left is not only Karan Kapoor, but worn out literatures where glamour meant Bombay dyeing or Grasim and definitely Dinesh with Sunny Gavaskar rooting for it or even.....Lakme nailpolishes....hugely predicated by the way Sonu Walia had her fingers playing with the telephone chord those days.

And of course, Vinod Khanna had to look glamourous, a matt finished green soap notwithstanding:

Stars had it then, eh? And some stars had it quite big for posterity to wonder how they had it.....yeh bhi koi baat hain?

The star on left was barely a star as far as I could remember..... in the 1980s I mean. Okay....so yeah..."Hero" was a hit, as was the tune. But to see so many sponsorships heaped on this person makes me say in Malvolio fashion...."..some have greatness thrust upon them". Evidences follow:

I remember the "Savage" blade and the 7'o' clock and the Wilkinson. But Jackie Shroff as a model for an aftershave called "savage" or being too macho to smoke charminar was lost on me.....probably with a good reason.........which again, is probably too subconscious or too politically incorrect to spill. I guess sometimes we smooth out on the edges of our memories for valid reasons, without being too patterned in the process.

As "Celine" once said, "Memories are wonderful things, if you don't have to deal with the past." A dear friend of mine always used to get a little rough whenever I would be nostalgic; get nostalgic while I'm miles away from home. Because memories are not supposed to bring anything to you....except the past, which is what you can't have. Or also because, they lose their meaning...."when you think of love, as something new..."

I wonder though....I haven't been able to forget a single person with whom I've interacted, or communicated for a day or two, or even for a minute or two. For better or for worse. Probably I've forgotten their names....their last names, but not them. And these pictures bring them back to me....from the dead...from the past. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing....I, being a 31 year old, do not care anymore. For me, they create a rustle of moments so precious that I can hardly let go. One can kiss them, but can't say goodbye....at least, not me.