What Nora Ephron forgot,and now wishes she had stored away Nora ephrons books (Heartburn,I Feel Bad About My Neck) and film scripts (When Harry Met Sally,Youve Got Mail,Julie & Julia) play on such an infinite loop that you know she is being provocative when she titles her latest collection of essays,this time on growing old and seizing the liberating abandon that comes with passing years,I Remember Nothing. She even begins in earnest: I have been forgetting things for years at least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about this at the time. I have proof. Of course,I cant remember where exactly I wrote about it,or when,but I could probably hunt it up if I had to. Of late,however,she says that things have changed: I have been forgetting things for years,but now I forget in a new way. I used to believe I could eventually retrieve whatever was lost and then commit it to memory. Now I know I cant possibly. Whatevers gone is hopelessly gone. And whats new doesnt stick. Then,having exhausted all the ways in which to convey this blankness while being clever-verging-dangerously-on-being-cute,she proceeds to recount tales from her past. And if the corollary of I remember nothing can be said to be I am now free to make up stories,we know that is not true of Ephron. You either like a Nora Ephron film or you do not. And if you do,you know how her stories,wit,dialogue and characters steal over you by suggesting that there is something in the sequence that you may already know and if you let your mind free to find out what it is,you may just strike success by the time the film is over. It is all spookily,and entertainingly,deja vu. And so it is with this new collection of writings: you recognise phrases from previous books,clues from her sisters novel (Delia Ephrons Hanging Up),endings from suspenseful episodes (there she is struggling with the script of When Harry Met Sally,driven by the need to pay bills,but ready to dump it all upon the arrival of what she anticipates to be a hefty inheritance of course,having seen and loved the film,you know hers will not be a life of leisure,but you are compelled to worry and issue a silent prayer for the films cause),entries on lists of stuff she will miss in the great beyond (Pride and Prejudice,but,of course). The ditziness is an act; I Remember Nothing is a submission that you can enjoy the present and look forward to the future on your own terms if you allow yourself to rummage through your past on your own terms terms that neither heed the inhibitions of younger days or allow the convenient excuses of those more anxious,hurried years. So,dont,for a moment,fall for Ephrons early regret: I know,I know,I should have kept a journal. I should have saved the love letters. I should have taken a storage room somewhere.for all the papers I thought Id never need to look at again. Certainly,who hasnt at some time fantasised about that storage room where a persons entire lifetime can be found? The thrill is not just the vanity in imagining the luxury of a space dedicated to preserving the detritus of an ordinary life it is,even more,pretending that you can be organised enough to store papers in a way that you could actually locate the right stack just when it is needed. Gordon Bell,Microsoft veteran,has offered to solve that problem of data-mining your memories. Playing his own case study in photographing,scanning,storing every factoid and co-ordinate of his life,he published a book a couple of years ago with the self-explanatory title,Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything,and made the grandiose claim: The arc of human development from the Stone Age through the present can be seen as an ongoing quest for Total Recall. By recording your life digitally,or lifelogging,you would store everything you have read,seen,heard,details of everywhere you have been and of how you have been (medically and logistically),all of it encrypted to protect your privacy and arranged so as to allow easy recall. Whatever your situation,youd have no reason to despair that you remember nothing. How scary is that? mini.kapoor@expressindia.com
