To tell the truth, I thought you would ask the corollary question - how is it that Swara did not recognise Adarsh?
[Brace yourself, I am going to ramble, a lot]
Adarsh saw Swara at Arunima's place, dressed in a typical Bengal saree draped in the Bengali way and is introduced as Amar's cousin. (he did see her earlier too, when Tarun was born, at the hospital, but he had a lot on his mind, remember the MSS offer?) Nothing to flag anything suspicious, for the girl he met, almost five years ago, had long straight hair, black eyes, wore four inch heels, and was wearing a western styled gown who was enacting the role of a high class escort. Adarsh, was not in his element, remember, he is uncomfortable about sitting in bars and he was angry for his client had kept him waiting in vain. Further, the whole incident had disastrous results, so he does not want to remember. Moreover, there was nothing to indicate that Swara, Amar's orphan cousin could be the stylish escort in the bar of Hotel Hyatt at Mumbai.
Now as to why I was worried if you asked the question you did not ask?
This is tougher to answer and is based on my understanding of how memories work. Memories are tricky and consist of three things, the facts of the event, the context in which they took place and emotional investment of person owning that memory. I will highlight the same with an incident. (very much simplified, but should do)
Two girls caught talking in class, are pulled up by the teacher who spanks both across their knuckes and has them stand outside for the rest of the period. One of the girls is guilty of talking the other had been an unwilling listener.
Ten years later this is how the memory would be - if you were the girl who was talking, it would be embarrassment and maybe a grudge against the teacher for being harsh. But if you were the girl who was only listening, it would be embarrassment and anger at the unfairness of being punished equally as perpetrator was, for in this case the equality of the punishment was not fair. If you were the teacher you would not really care, talking in class was a punishable offence. And finally if you were another student in the class, you might not even remember, especially if neither of those girls were your friends.
Your memory of the incident would also be coloured by the intervening events, sometimes you can laugh at it or you would so hate that incident that you would strive to bury it deep, for remembering it causes you pain.
To put it in scientific jargon -
We have two separate memory systems, we all do, and that all these problems with memory are just the natural results of things our two memory systems sometimes do to keep us alive and functioning under threat. We don't choose whether or not our memory systems will react that way to an immediate threat, and it's not tied to how strong or brave or smart we are. It's a reaction to the way all our natural chemicals sometimes work together under stress and threat.
Just deciding not to remember or think about what happened won't make things better, because the memory system we use when we choose (or don't choose) to remember something isn't the one that sometimes causes problems later. Our two separate systems deal with:
Conscious, "narrative" memory - like what we did yesterday, where we grew up, what we learned in school, where we are in the novel we're reading, what people we know look like, how to do our work, how to get home, etc.
Unconscious, "emotional" memory - vivid sights, sounds, smells, emotions, and physical sensations linked to positive (happy, pleasing) situations or negative situations like the experience of loss, pain, or danger
The conscious memory system keeps its memories pretty much out in the open, and we can usually find them when we choose to and ignore them if we want to. But the unconscious memory system keeps its memories tucked away until our brain systems tell it we need them for survival purposes (to pull us toward things that will bring us pleasure, or warn us about things that will cause us pain). Then it pulls them out and puts them right in front of us where we can't ignore themas images, sounds, or smells "in our heads," strong emotions, or sensations in our bodies.
Two common examples from ordinary life:
You went to a movie yesterday that really affected you in a positive way. Today you're just going about your life, and something reminds you of someone or something in the movie. Right away, a powerful image from the movie comes up in your mind, and for a few seconds you feel the same pleasure you felt watching it yesterday
Last week you were in a minor accident with someone else driving. Now you're a passenger again, and even though it's not the same person driving, your body gets tense every time the traffic gets dicey or the driver gets too close to another car, and you feel anxious or annoyed with the driver.
That unconscious, emotional memory system is kind of like the nearsighted guy who isn't wearing his glasses and says "good morning" to a parking meter. It gets things wrong a lot. Anything that even vaguely reminds it of its memories of pain and danger can seem like a threat and trigger strong survival reactions. And it can do all this without even paying any attention to the conscious, narrative memory system that understands what's really going on.
But why do we sometimes forget times of extreme pain and danger - like the women who forget the pain of childbirth, the adults who don't remember bad things that happened to them as kids, or the veterans who can't remember firefights or explosions they were in? That's because of the way our different brain chemicals work together under stress and threat. In some cases, our brains may "record" intense unconscious memories of sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, but have trouble recording the conscious memories that would help us piece together what happened. In both cases, this is the body's best guess at what will protect us and help us survive.
~ Source: humanprioritiesorg/home/resilience-stress-and-trauma/the-effects-of-trauma-on-memory
So memory and brain can be tricky, which gives me ample scope to play. The emotional connect is why certain names / incidents trigger the memory in Swara (which is what I decide😆, for it is universally accepted that we still do not know much about the human brain) - she remembered what she had learnt about Laksh when introduced to him but Adarsh did not trigger any memory in her😉 Even Sanskaar did not, though the sight of Mihir Bhavan did.
So I hope I have given you some clarity or at least convinced you that I know what I am talking about (I hope I do😉)
Edited by Nynaeve - 7 years ago
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