Guides

What Meenira remembers between calls, and what she never keeps

By Tapas Kar, founder · Last updated 2 October 2026

Facts, not recordings

The easiest way to build a thing that "remembers" is to keep every recording and let a machine search them. We do not do that, for two reasons. The first is the rule we tell every parent at the start of every call: the audio is not kept, and the written transcript is deleted after thirty days. A memory that outlived its own transcript would be a quiet way of breaking that promise. The second is that a wrong memory is worse than none. A system that guesses at your mother's life from old recordings will one day get a late husband's name wrong, and that is the end of trust.

So Meenira remembers the way a good neighbour does: in a few short facts, noted at the moment they are said. When your mother mentions on the call that Ayaan has exams next week, Meenira writes down Ayaan, grandson, exams next week and nothing more. If she did not think it worth noting during the conversation, it is not noted afterwards. Nothing is extracted from the transcript later.

What a fact looks like

Each one is a line, with who or what it is about and where it came from:

• People. Ayaan — grandson — in fifth standard. Kamala — neighbour — brings the milk.
• Routines and places. Market on Tuesdays. The temple on Thursdays.
• Likes and dislikes. Cricket. Does not like the new serial.
• Health threads. Knee pain — about two months — worse on the stairs. A thread stays open until she hears it has settled, so a symptom is followed across days rather than rediscovered each morning.
• Medicines, from the list you gave at sign-up, and the note you wrote about your parent.
• Open loops. Was going to make the mango pickle today. The small unfinished things that make tomorrow's opening a conversation instead of a form.

Each line also carries how sure she is of it, when it was first heard and last confirmed, and whether it is something to be careful with. A money worry, a low mood, a family quarrel — she marks those as sensitive, and will not raise them unprompted, though she responds warmly if your parent does.

What she is told before a call

Before each call Meenira is given a short briefing, not the whole list: a handful of facts, five at most, chosen by how recently they came up and how sure she is of them, with a bias against anything she has used in the last few calls, so she does not become the relative who tells the same story every visit. Any open health threads, with how long ago they were mentioned. And exactly one thing to open with.

That one thing is the callback. Yesterday you were going to make the pickle — did it turn out? One is warmth; four is surveillance. If something more serious is open — a fall, a pain that was getting worse — that takes the place of the pickle, and the pieces of it are asked about as one thing, not scattered through the call behind the electricity bill.

The briefing also carries the short list of things she must not raise. If your father has told her he would rather not talk about his late wife, she will respond warmly if he brings it up and will never ask.

How a fact fades

Nothing is quietly deleted by the system. A fact that has not come up again fades instead: its weight halves roughly every six weeks it goes unmentioned, so the knee that stopped hurting in March has dropped out of the briefing by summer without anyone having to remove it. If your mother mentions it again, it comes back. A health thread she hears has settled is closed rather than erased, so the history of it is still there to read.

What you can see and change

Open your parent on Home and choose What she remembers. The facts are grouped — people, routines, topics, health, open loops. For any one of them you can:

• Correct the name or the detail. Your correction outranks anything she heard, and she will not drift back to the old version.
• Remove it. It is gone from the briefing at once, and from the record.
• Download everything she holds about your parent — the calls, the summaries and the list — as a file you keep.

You cannot add facts. The list is your parent's account of their own life, and the only way into it is for them to say it.

What she never keeps

• The audio of any call.
• A transcript older than thirty days.
• Anything your parent, or you, asks to have removed. The fact goes, and everything hanging off it with it.
• Conclusions about character or diagnosis. She records what was said — the knee hurts — never what it might mean — she is depressed. The same rule that keeps her from playing doctor keeps her from playing psychologist.
• Anything belonging to another family. Each parent's memory is sealed to that parent, and no query ever crosses it.

If your parent stops the calls, or you do, the notes are deleted. Download them first if you would like to keep them; by then they are a small record of a life, told in its own words.

Hear how a call sounds What we keep, and for how long

Questions families ask

Does Meenira record my parent's calls?

She says at the start of every call that the conversation is written down so that you can be told how your parent is. The audio itself is not kept. The written transcript is held for thirty days and then deleted; what remains is the short list of facts described on this page, which you can see and change.

Can I add things for Meenira to remember?

No. You can correct or remove what she has noted, but not add to it — the family cannot put words in the parent's mouth. The exception is the note you write at sign-up, and the medicines you list, which she is given as background from the first call.

What happens to what she remembers if we stop?

Stopping the calls deletes her notes about your parent. Before you stop, you can download everything she holds — calls, summaries and the list of facts — from your parent's page on Home.