The family joked whenever she called out to one of her seven daughters, my grandmother would never hit the right name first. She’d begin “Chanda, no Jayanti, no Gaura, no Indira, no, oho Manjulaaaaa”. The daughters reacted variously. Aunt Manjula, the one called out to, would usually hoot from somewhere in the garden that she was learning to ride a bike so no matter how urgent the task, she was unavailable. Another daughter, quieter and more straitlaced, would rock with silent laughter at her mother’s well known quirk. And the youngest, one irritated at being summoned suddenly in the midst of school homework, would scowl and tell those of us who were always lurking around that her mother was losing her marbles. Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyMemories begin to unfurl some more. The sundry widowed aunts who had nowhere else to go and had sought shelter under my grandparents’ generous roof, thereafter pegging their tents in their surrogate, sat shelling peas or mending old clothes or polishing brass. When they heard grandmother calling out names, they wiped their eyes and sighed, “ Aha, how large and merry this family was once. Now that’s her way of touching them all like her prayer beads. As Mother she can never let go of even her long dead calves.”Memories are what lives are made of, not algorithms. Once upon a time, family memories passed through mediating structures erected by the earlier generations, changing with each telling, but always putting our family histories in perspective for us. And then they gradually go on to join a longer chain of human memories as we begin to read the history of humankind. This explains why even the old fading widows, wrapped in their invisibility in their own way, formed a timeless chorus that sensitised all who may care to be listening, about bereaved mothers wandering among memories of lost children, calling out to them and how all old families were surrounded with mists of time that was not linear in its movement but cyclicalI wonder what they would be saying if they were to witness what is happening all around us from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Yemen to Iran and Israel. How they would by citing tales about battles long ago that they had heard of and linked them to an earlier age lost to us. Time, past these mediated memories, might help us see that it does not go away in some dark hole. It curls up like a sleeping bag that mankind carries on its back alwaysIn her late 70s, our mother had also begun calling out multiple names when summoning one of us. She’d giggle later and say “Ah may this forgetful brain burst! I am beginning to sound like your grandmotherMemories play hide and seek with all mothers as they age. I have had several old friends swatted down when they called up their non resident children or grandchildren and earned a sharp rebuke because she addressed them by her another “Don’t tell me that on my birthday you have even forgotten my name.“I haven’t. But if you will not be in touch for months and leave all the calling and skyping to us this will happenWrong retort. End of conversations. Both sides relapse into scrolling their tablets and smart phones that mediate memories now for most of us, cut off as we have become from those old choruses of aunts, grand aunts and grand uncles.WhatsApp is the grand mediator of family collectives in our age. Friends and relatives send each other a series of old photos on WhatsApp. Remember when we so and so had come visiting with her new born first daughter, and you all were visiting her with yours? Those daughters and sons are now all grown up and working in various parts of the globe, some married, some not. Of late mothers with children living in west Asia have been on our radars. All is well they assure us. But we can see they do not believe it themselves. I am astonished at my device that now stores all my own photos. How young we all were once upon a time, how vulnerably happy and ignorant of wars and divorces and sudden stock market meltdowns. We the Boomers realize there was a time when our lot wore sarees which most in my age group have abandoned since. We believed as we cavorted on campuses with protest banners after Vietnam that all wars were in the past and history of razed cities and burning ships and dead children belonged to another age. Living within bubbles of timeless bliss, families reacted to each birth not with a sense of sad acceptance of another unfortunate being but with real joy.Did our ancients, even our grandmother who’d have been 125 now, think of time’s passage the way we think now? If this old computer crashes I know I shall lose all touch with times gone by, articles and book chapters written, book launches held, get togethers attended, parties, parks and beaches visited. As I scroll the folders and photos stored in my wheezing device, years pass in the blink of an eye. It is as if unbeknownst to us, we have stopped existing in real time. We all inhabit TV time, measured in daily news bulletins, special news breaks and leaders’ addresses to the nation. Our book marks are OTT serials and YouTube stand up comics and ponderous political podcastsGen Z, whose votes will make or break new governments all over the world, have scarcely rubbed shoulders with human accounts of history, familial, national or international. They have grown up in the lap of laptops, and were groomed as toddlers by algorithmic information. The AI and its algorithms can read their minds and predict their preferences before their parentsThe human reaction to passing of seasons and their association with the arts in music, theatre or festivals for different communities in India holds little interest for Gen Z. They can relive the near obsolete Urdu literature and Hindi dialects by invoking a collage of tiny pieces on YouTube without background. From Kumbh Melas to the Kavvalis at Urs in dargahs are all served to them by the press of a button sans human memories that could make them curious or excited. They remain secure in the knowledge that history lies captive in their phonesAs children, we were curious to have grandmothers share their remembered pasts, her children who we never saw, ghosts that visited her regularly and how all through her youth she slept with her latest new born in frequently piss soaked beds while her husband always had his bed made in pristine white sheets that smelt of camphor. Those regions of real lives mediated by individuals have slowly become unavailable to Gen Z being raised in nuclear families in gated communities or foreign soilThe young parents worry about blocking out “material unsuitable for the young” on TV and social media, about forcing the children away from violent video games and games arcades in malls. They are not as worried about the TV news censoring out the manmade tragedies globally, or sales of prophylactics with leering taglines, ads for theme weddings and carcinogenic gutkha sold as romantic aphrodisiacs symbolising old money and obsolete royalty. Should all moral panic be concentrated only on content and not form? Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.