When Names Ring Bells

I recently found myself cc’ed on an email exchange between two of my friends. Sanjeev asked Kau if the name Manisha rang a bell. I couldn’t resist answering, even though the question wasn’t meant for me. I told Sanjeev I was reminded of Manisha Koirala, a Bollywood actress. Sanjeev was surprised. He said he didn’t think I knew about the actress.

Sanjeev had a point. My ignorance of film stars is legion.

But Manisha Koirala was an exception. There was a time – almost three years ago – when her name was on my lips night after night for several nights, as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Faceless Names

I can seldom match a film star's name with their face, on the rare occasions when I recognize the name. If someone shows me Hema Malini's picture and tells me it’s Manisha Koirala, I’ll take their word for it. There are exceptions, of course. I wouldn't fall for it if someone tried to pass off Lata Mangeshkar as Manisha Koirala.

I can match film stars’ names with their faces for a few days after seeing a Bollywood movie, but I'm unable to recollect ever having seen them just a few weeks later.

It's not that I don't see Bollywood movies regularly; I do. I dutifully see one once every five years.

Hypochondriac that I am, I'm afraid I may have prosopagnosia – an impaired ability to recognize faces.

Repeat Tautology

One of the most glaring examples of my face-recognition deficiency occurred almost two decades ago, when my newly-minted friends from graduate school introduced me to one of their friends one fine evening. A couple years older to me, this person was lionized in the Indian media for his academic accomplishments. I had heard about him years before I first met him. As I shook his hands that evening, he told me we had met before. I remembered meeting him, and I remembered what we had talked about. But for all I knew, I was seeing his face for the very first time.

Embarrassing as it was, there was more in store. When I ran into him and his friends in the Beltway Plaza mall near my Greenbelt home a week later, I approached him and introduced myself.
"Hi," I said, "I'm Ninad."
He flashed a wide grin. "I'm Sanjeev," he said. "We've met twice before!"

It was the same Sanjeev who was now asking about Manisha. I can recognize Sanjeev quite easily these days, having met him many times over the past few years. But I'm still plagued by uncertainty if I run into him in an unfamiliar locale, or if he is by himself.

Just the other day, I spotted a familiar face grinning at me from about twenty feet away, outside the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Maryland. I didn't grin back at him. I didn't smile either. I turned around nervously, wondering whether Sanjeev's evil twin was grinning at my evil twin.

Only when I noticed there was no one behind me did I muster the courage to flash Sanjeev a smile. It's best to err on the side of caution, I figured. That's what cowards do anyway!

The incident in the Beltway Plaza mall may have been the nadir of embarrassment, but it wasn't quite the apotheosis of prosopagnosia. The direst dulling of my face-recognition capabilities was still fifteen years away.

Nameless Faces

In the days after being hospitalized for severe head trauma from being hit by a small branch of a falling tree, I didn't recognize anyone's faces, except those of my close relatives. I also mistook my roommate and my close friends for people whom I knew from a decade earlier, even though those people had only been mere acquaintances.

My face-recognition capabilities were restored as the days in hospital turned into weeks, but people's names continued to be a blank slate. When an ex-colleague visited me in hospital, I told him point blank that I remembered who he was, but I couldn’t recollect his name. “Darn!” I thought, when he reintroduced himself. “His name sounds so familiar; we used to meet every day. How did I forget his name?”

I do not remember his name anymore. People don’t fall by the wayside, but memories do.

A week before my release from hospital, I remembered that the Director of my group at my former workplace was an Indian from Mumbai, a native Hindi speaker fluent in Marathi. I could recollect his face quite vividly, but his name drew a blank. The tables had been turned. Faceless names had made way for nameless faces.

After my parents left my bedside for the day at 8 p.m., I would apply all my vigor to remembering the Director’s name. It was unquestionably the day's most intellectually demanding pursuit.

My efforts were partially rewarded after a couple of days, when I remembered his first name was Manish. But try as I might, all my attempts at appending a surname would zero in on Manisha Koirala. Much to my frustration, it was a story that repeated itself night after night. Only after being released from hospital did I remember his name was Manish Choudrey.

Distinct though Manisha Koirala is from Manish Choudrey, the two are maddeningly alike when your brain wafts aimlessly through a skewered haze.

As the years shoot by like a bullet train, and callowness gives way to mellowness, I hope the demons of head trauma, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease stay forever at bay. Let's hope I never forget my own name. But one can never be sure. We can tell when a name rings a bell, but who knows how the bells of the future will toll?