The future will hunt for today's blogs, diaries and Instagram

Our lives are built on graveyards. When we look to the horizon, we are perched on the shoulders of dead men. All that we are today — our science, our art, this very language in which I now write — is built on layers of history. It’s a strange twist of human nature that we rarely choose to learn about it, far less learn from it. Time to trot out that old chestnut —  those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Trite, you say. Middle-aged maundering, sneers the young man with the shades hooked on the back of his collar. I may know that the hordes of Genghis conquered more lands than Caesar and Alexander combined, but will it make any difference to the course of my life? Carpe diem. We live in the present. I need to know what is happening in the world today, not what happened a thousand years ago.

But where is the boundary between the past and the present, between current affairs and modern history? Yesterday? Last month? The last century? Suppose we accept that true history starts at the boundary of living memory. The question is, whose memory? The sprightly 108-year-old in the Caucasus may remember the cherry trees he climbed as a boy, but had he heard of the Great War raging two thousand miles to the west of his idyllic mountains? The answer, of course, lies in the records.

Not that we should believe the records unquestioningly. Given the normal pace of evolution, it is unlikely that in the 4th century BC there was a race in India who had eyes in their foreheads, or hopped around on one single leg. That is what the credulous Megasthenes recorded in Indica. Later historians such as Strabo and Arrian quoted him without any great admiration, and it would be safe to say that they were not exactly fan-boys.

On the other hand, Megasthenes did write about the reign of Sandrocottus, whom we know as Chandragupta. John Keays, in his History of India (read it — absolutely outstanding stuff!) contends that Megasthenes is one of the most important figures in the study of Indian history. For a very basic reason — the Indica is the earliest document that links the chronology of the western world to a verifiable point in the history of India. It places two distinct civilisations in the perspective of time!

All because Megasthenes scribbled in his notebook.

Which brings me back to the earlier point. What is history, that we should remember it? If I don’t care how many marriages the Kardashian sisters have notched up, why should I remember  Anne Boleyn or Anne of Cleves? Besides, history is a record of the victors. Do you even remember whom William conquered in 1066? But there’s the rub. History is not only what we choose to remember, it is also the sum of the records available. We just have to glean the gold from it.

Records. No matter how ruthlessly the British empire impoverished its colonies, its officers took meticulous notes. Of their travels, their laws, their battles — and also their menus and their laundry lists. History is not just a record of kings. It is brought to life through our insights into the lives of ordinary men. And sometimes these insights can save lives. Nineteen years ago, the plague in Surat was curbed because lessons were learned from the Great Plague of London in 1665. All because we had access to records. To history.

So write that diary. And back up your Instagrams.

The author is a reluctant bureaucrat and an avid photographer.