Pop it, forget it

A pill for bad memories

Our mutual interaction tends, given that we are a species as complex and complicated as nothing else, to produce both feelings of euphoria and acute depression.

The latter, however, may have a cure at hand: an antidote for bad memories. An international team of scientists, led by the University of Puerto Rico, has reportedly discovered a drug that can lessen the painful impact of bad memories. The protein called Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) works by ‘flooding the mind with feelings of security and safety'.

A dose of the substance is supposed to reduce fear and anxiety making us all happy and contented human beings, dispensing with the services of spiritual gurus. There are other benefits. The heartbroken, by way of amorous matters or otherwise, could find prompt relief.

Then, it could help us, in India, get over several issues. The Partition, for example. All we need to do is get an Indian pharma company to make a generic version of the substance and produce it on a massive scale.

The resultant pill or syrup could then be supplied, through all available private and public sector means, to the whole population. And, of course, we supply it in requisite doses to neighbouring countries.
    
Once it is consumed, we will be so full of the milk of human kindness, all mutual hostility so utterly forgotten, that we will be trampling over each other to shower kisses and hugs on our previously-hated ones.

The fringe benefit will be that the fundos on either side, both the well-bearded and the saffron sort, will, in the Marxian sense of things, wither away and die.

That, as some of us might aver, is a consummation devoutly to be wished for. Irritating sceptics, however, might try to point out that this whole culture of having a pill for everything is somewhat odd, or perhaps even undesirable.

They could be force-fed the pill on a priority basis. And then we can take another pill so that all of us can forget anything nasty happened.