Quote

“I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent versions of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”

This quote exemplifies what we discussed last time in class about how truth is relative and how a person’s memories are their own individual truths. This is in the section “At the Pioneer Cafe”, as Saleem anxiously explains his narrative to Padma. Saleem is aware of his historical inconsistencies and even addresses them, but he knows his story sounds far-fetched to someone as pragmatic as Padma. What Saleem is trying to get across is that everything that he is saying is true, maybe not necessarily because it happened that way, but because it is the way he remembers it. This rearranging of history allows for his story to have a depth and meaning to him that it wouldn’t have originally and it allows him to carve his own path for his narrative and tell his truths and their effects on his life.