"Oh! I Forgot!"

[Guest guest]

Srimate Srivan Satakopa Sri Vedanta Desika

Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

 

“Oh! I Forgot!”

 

How many times have you and I kept something

“safely”, forgotten all about where we kept it and

searched high and low for the same, some time later? How many times

have we left behind at home some important thing or the other, which

we ought to have taken to office and have had to rush back to collect

the same? And few indeed would be the people who have not forgotten

their reading glasses and kept searching for the same every now and

then. More than we prosaic people, scientists and philosophers are

reported to be extremely forgetful persons, their genius perhaps

making them so focussed on their research, leaving little space in

their “hard discs” for anything else. We thus hear of

“Absent-minded Professors” and of scientists like

Archimedes who rushed out from his bathroom, excited over a

discovery, but clad only in his birthday suit. And there are persons

who develop selective and convenient amnesia, in respect of things or

sums they have borrowed from gullible others. Yet others, suffering

from the same malady, remember only the favours they have done

others, but not those received.

 

It is interesting to note that even Sri Rama was credited with

forgetfulness--of course of the right sort. Sri Valmiki says that He

never remembered any number of insults or injuries caused by others,

while recollecting vividly and for a long time, the favours done to

Him by others—

 

“na smarati apakArANAm satamapi Atmavattaya”

 

Forgetfulness increases with age, with one’s memory playing

tricks on one. As we grow older, we are unable to recollect names, to

match names to faces and to remember events and places. It is as if

the grey cells are slowly losing their bytes.

 

Of course, you can’t call forgetfulness an unmitigated curse. It

also serves to many as a healing agent, making them gradually

unremember (to coin a word) tragedies and catastrophes, which have

all but destroyed them. The passing away of a near one, the loss of a

fortune in business or speculation, the words of venom hurled at one

by a close friend or relative in anger, an ignominy suffered in full

sight of one’s peers—all these cease to trouble us after

a few months or years, only because of forgetfulness, which is indeed

God’s kindest gift to mankind.

 

Here are a few instances from our Scriptural lore, where

forgetfulness has often played a crucial role.

 

If you want to read of a classic case of considerable hurt being

caused by lack of memory, you need not look beyond the story of

Shakuntala. Emperor Dushyanta, while on a hunting expedition, chances

across Shakuntala, the foster-daughter of KaNva Maharshi, losing his

heart to her at once. The Sovereign’s feelings are heartily

reciprocated by the damsel and the couple decide to enter into

wedlock immediately and consummate their marriage too. Dushyanta

presents Shakuntala with his signet ring and returns to his capital,

intending very much to return and make the lady his queen formally.

However, as fate would have it, he forgets all about the momentous

happening, including the unforgettable beauty of Shakuntala and of

having made her his wife, with only the five elements as witness. In

the meanwhile, Shakuntala waits and waits for the King’s return

and finally, in desperation, repairs to the royal court, only to be

rebuffed by the forgetful King and sent out unceremoniously, all her

claims of matrimony rejected summarily. The Royal Ring, with which

she could have proved the truth of her version, is lost in the

meanwhile, leaving Shakuntala with little proof of what took place.

The Ring is swallowed by a fish and finds its way to a fisherman who

slits open the fish’s stomach and is surprised by his find.

Recognising the Ring for what it is, the fisherman takes it to the

King, in the hope of being rewarded. It is the sight of the ring that

jogs the King’s recalcitrant memory, filling him with remorse

and making him rush immediately to bring Shakuntala back to his

palace with profuse apologies and all due honour. Though the royal

couple did live happily ever after, we may say with certainty that

the trauma and torment caused by the Emperor’s forgetfulness

would never have been forgotten by the poor Shakuntala, who would

definitely have taken care thenceforth to have at least a hundred

witnesses present, whenever she said something important to the

Emperor.

 

Srimad Ramayanam too portrays how forgetfulness can seize even the

greatest of souls. We are told of a curse that Dasaratha incurred

during his youth, having directed an arrow unknowingly at the source

of a particular sound, while on a hunting expedition. The

Chakravartthi finds out to his dismay that what he mistook to be a

wild animal was in fact a Rishi kumAra, the only son of a blind,

elderly couple who depended on the former for each and every one of

their needs. Deprived of their sole source of support and sorrowed

beyond measure by the untimely demise of their promising progeny, the

elderly Rishi curses Dasaratha that the latter would die similarly of

“Putra shOkham” or the pangs of parting from a dear son.

 

Though dismayed at the turn of events, the Emperor forgets the curse

in course of time, as he engages in statecraft, piloting the fortunes

of his vast empire. And for sixty thousand years, we are told, the

Emperor did not beget any sons to carry on the famed IkshvAku dynasty

and performed Putra KAmEshti, praying for progeny.

 

It is thus Dasaratha’s forgetfulness that makes him yearn for

offspring, for, had he remembered that he would die of pangs of

separation from his son, he would perhaps not have prayed for one at

all. We may therefore say that the entire epic would not have been

born at all, but for the Chakraavartthi’s lack of

memory—there would have been no Rama, no Sharanagata Rakshanam

and the world would have been denied of an eternal guidebook of good

conduct. This is no mere canard, as can be seen from the following

couplet of Sri Valmiki, which tells us that Dasaratha forgot all

about the curse for sixty-thousand-and-odd long years and recollected

the same only when he was almost on his deathbed, tearfully recounting

the details thereof to Kousalya—

 

“tasya chintayamAnasya pratyapAt karma dushkritam

yat anEna kritam poorvam agyyanAt shabda vEdinA”

 

Another key character in the Epic too suffers from amnesia, we are

told by Sri Valmiki. You would be surprised to learn the identity of

this glorious character, who is renowned for his sharp intellect

(“buddhimatAm varishttam”) and unmatched valour. It is

none other than Sri Hanuman, who is credited with forgetfulness. As a

child, Sri Maruti was so extremely super active and mischievous, that

Rishis had trouble carrying on their activities, when he was around.

Unconscious of his superhuman strength, Hanuman used to visit the

hermitages and wreak havoc with his innumerable pranks. We must

understand here that it was no enmity or hatred that caused Tiruvadi

to do all this, but mere boyish exuberance. However, whatever be the

reason, the “monkey business” was indeed a nuisance to

the Rishis, who threw a curse on Hanuman, in self-defence. The effect

of the curse was that the Vanara Veera totally forgot his own

prodigious strength and recollected it only when someone reminded him

about it.

 

It is thus that we see that when one brave monkey after another

recounts his prowess in terms of the distance he could jump and

clear, Sri Hanuman sits silent, listening to everybody but not

contributing to the conversation at all, when it ought to have been

he who should have been at the forefront, telling all that he could

easily cross the ocean and reach Lanka, with his indefatigable energy

quite undiminished. It is only after Jambavan reminds Hanuman of the

dimensions and depth of his strength, that Maruti recollects and

gears himself up to the task.

 

Would you be surprised to learn that all of us, even those with the

sharpest of memories, do suffer from the most debilitating form of

forgetfulness? It is this forgetfulness that makes us go round and

round in unending circles in the maze of SamsAra, knowing not the way

out. It is this lapse of memory that is responsible for all our

suffering, for our descent from the exalted pedestal that is

rightfully ours, to the unspeakable mundane morass. It is the

inability to remember our own original splendour, the magnificence

and glory of the Lord, the inalienable relationship that we enjoy

with Him, our roles as eternal servitors to the Supreme Being,

etc.—it is our lack of recollection of these vital statistics

that makes us wallow in the quagmire of SamsAra. If only we manage to

remember all these, we would never have occasion to be born in this

miserable world and would be as happy as the permanent residents of

Sri Vaikuntam, who never forget their relationship with the Lord and

are hence never called upon to undergo the rigorous imprisonment in

the physical bodies prone to destruction.

 

If this is the experience of mundane mortals like us, what could

exalted beings like Azhwars feel on the subject? Does this lack of

memory apply to them as well?

 

Sri Nammazhwar tells us that the Lord tries His best to banish the

bane of forgetfulness from us. Knowing full well that we mortals

would forget Him in a jiffy and at the slightest provocation, He

appears before us, looking extremely beautiful with His long,

red-lined and lotus-like eyes, imprinting them on our soul in such a

way that we are unable to forget Him, even if we fervently wish to.

And once we become the subject matter of those famed broad and black

eyes, there is no forgetting them—He just wouldn’t let us

forget Him, try as we might, says Sri Nammazhwar in the following

pAsuram, which portrays eloquently the boundless love and affection

Emperuman has for us, which prompt Him to cure us of our deplorable

lack of memory for all the proper things—

 

“Marappum gnAnamum nAn ondru uNarndilan

marakkum endru sentAmarai kaNNodu

marapppara en uLLE manninAn tannai

marappanO ini yAn en maNiyayE?”

 

 

Once we manage to recollect our real roles as the servants of the

Lord, there is no going back to the old days of forgetfulness, for,

He doesn’t let us forget, says Sri Tirumazhisai Azhwar

too—

 

“andru nAn pirandilEn, pirandapin marandilEn”

 

Forgetfulness is thus both a virtue and a curse. When it is about the

injuries or insults meted out by others to us, it is a virtue. When

it comes to forgetting good turns done by others or the eternal

relationship we have with Emperuman, it is a curse.

 

The trick, therefore, is to develop selective amnesia.

 

Srimate Sri LakshmINrisimha divya paduka sevaka SrivanSatakopa Sri

Narayana Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

dasan, sadagopan