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ShareIt is one of the strangest coincidences ever. A friend of mine just underwent a transplant surgery and is recovering from it, and a book that I randomly borrowed from the library dwells on the same subject. Alexander McCall Smith is not an author I would pick up in the usual scheme of things. But as I put together a stack of borrowed books, an image of my husband's puzzled face swam into my vision: Why is it that you only read books written by women?
Probably because women writers engage better with their readers, be it the loftiest of themes or the tritest of details. Whereas men tend to be self-absorbed, has been my stock reply until now.
Nevertheless, I have taken to adding a token male writer to my pile as I don't like to be accused of prejudice. Having just finished Philip Roth's Exit Ghost -- that was mostly about the hero's prostate, incontinence, erectile dysfunction and infatuation for a much younger woman -- McCall Smith's book seemed less onerous, for it came with a fairly innocuous title: Friends, Lovers and Chocolate, and the cover image was of a large mug of drinking chocolate with a swirl of cream. It suggested nothing about the most intriguing aspect of the book, namely, the possibility of cellular memory.
To this day there is speculation regarding the physiology of long-term memory. The hippocampus located inside the medical temporal lobe is associated with memory, at least long-term memory. In fact, London cab drivers who are supposed to know every little street and alley in the city in order to get their license are known to have an enlarged Hippocampus. However, there is no definite conclusion as to where memory is stored.
Scientists claim that long-term memories are stored in multiple regions in the nervous system. Which essentially means that anywhere the nerves penetrate, could be a possible memory site. So what happens in the case of organ recipients? Do their memories now have to accommodate the cellular memories of the new organs? For instance, if I had a skin graft and the skin came from someone who preferred tepid to scalding showers, would my temperature preferences change? Memory is said to be real-time experience transformed into remembered experience. In which case, how real is a memory anyway? Be it about friends, lovers or chocolate?
Anita Nair is the author of the novels The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and Mistress
