The Sense of An Ending: by Julian Barnes

It was on 27th January 2012, a Friday evening in the laboratory and a day before my 28th birthday. I wanted to take a break from my work and picked up the book, The Sense of an Ending, from the table of my senior and friend in the lab. I had heard about the book from my friends and I was eager to know if I would like the book or not. Some of my friends liked it while some did not. I was also eager to find out what would be the basis for my liking or not so of the book, once I finish reading it.

I started reading the book on the evening and it held my interest and I could not go to bed until I finished reading the book, slightly late into the night. The book is a narration of a set of events from life of a person named Tony Webster. The narration includes events from time as early as schooling of the narrator when his group of friends meet an intelligent and focused boy Adrian Finn and becomes friends with him. The narration goes on to include discussions amongst his friends, his late adolescence and teenage, his romantic episodes, break-ups, unfortunate death of his new friend Adrian, marriage, divorce and how life goes on. He is now an old man, who had lived his life and is retired from activity of life to a state of peaceful content. It is then by an unexpected event that his memories are stirred and the past is brought back in a new light. It is in this retrospective mood, that this narration is made and in the first person.

I completed reading the book in a single stretch and it was an interesting read for me. When I think back to find out what aspects of the book had greatest impact, there is no denying in the fact that I was struck by the narration of romantic adventures and fantasies of the young narrator, delicate and sometimes not so delicate. However, there are several other things from the book which also kept me thinking for long time after I finished reading the book. These are the things that I shall mention below.

In the beginning of the book, the narrator makes a confession that what he describes are what remembers as the truth and that he would not claim them to be the truth as they happened. This gave me an effect of authenticity and a sense of reality for this work of fiction. Many a time in the book, I would come across a statement from the author and felt that I too had felt in similar way, which gave me a sense of deja vu. The narrator seemed to have tried to give a disinterested view of the various events and of various things that he talked about. There is no attempt to force the views or ideas on the reader and the reader is left alone to think and form his or her own opinion. I was also struck with the right chords when it appeared to me that the narrator had an awareness and understanding of the scientific principles; which became apparent in at least two instances when he talked about the nature of time (or space-time) and about evolutionary significance of the ability of humans to feel nostalgic! There are several questions, philosophical as they seem, brought forward by the narrator in the book.

For instance, when we recollect an event from our past, does the memory include the details of the actions or the details of our mood or both? Are the details of the memory true to what really happened and existed originally or they are modifications of the original actions and moods by what has been slowly built by us over time?

Many of us would accept that our mood has a profound effect on perception of duration of time. A good mood and jovial time seemingly shortens a long duration of time while suffering and difficulties appear to stretch even a short period of time to eternity. If one's perception of time is so profoundly affected by one's mood, then how could one perceive history (one's own or otherwise ) which is nothing but the time that had past in an unbiased manner? Does it mean that what we think about our past is not what it actually is, but it greatly depends on our psychological and mental state of the past? Can we also extend this idea to the history (or past) of a society or culture as depicted by a historian or a group of historians?


It is remarkable that certain events in our lives bring up certain completely forgotten memories from the bottom of the mind to surface. It is as though, the sea of the memories is stirred violently but some specific events precipitate out. What comes back to memory might mostly be directly related to what had caused it to come back but it is not always necessarily so! How are these two- the causal event and the memory brought back to life related?

We act every moment in our lives whether willingly or not! Sometimes it is on the spur of the moment in a given situation but sometimes it could also be a pre-meditated response. Time moves on and we forget or push back several things to the back of our mind. On a fine day, suddenly something brings back a past action or response of ours to the front of our mind. And, we would wonder how could we possibly behave in the manner we did! Are we the same person as we were before? Where and when did the transformation happen? Did the transformation really happen or is it an effect of the mental state?

Every event in one's life (or in a society) has several contributing factors. Is it possible to attribute the happenings, good or bad, in one's life to various factors? If each factor is considered as a link in a chain, and a bad event is akin to breaking of the chain due to an unreasonable stretch, then to which link could one attribute the tragedy to? A weak link or a strong link? Is it of any use to think about the factors in this way?

How is our character built? Does it develop progressively with time in one's life or there is a final maturation of the character during the age of 23 to 30 years after which there is a stagnation as felt by the narrator?


In retrospect, I feel that the book gives several questions to think about (or reminds one of the questions already thought about) and in a few cases a possible direction towards some answers. The plot is slightly disturbing and the subject dealt with is not intended for a light reading but necessitates a minimum amount of attention from the reader to be able to understand what the narrator is trying to convey. And now if I ask myself again whether I liked the book, I would say that I am not sure! However I would definitely recommend one to read it with a bit of attention and deliberation.

friendship

Friendship is an inexplicable relationship. Each one of us has friends close and dear to us but may still find it hard to explain how friendship grows and strengthens with time. Is it that people with similar likes and dislikes become good friends? I think it is not necessarily the case. I received an SMS today, which says that " The world's happiest friends never have the same characters; they just have the best understanding of their differences". It is said that we become siblings by chance but we become friends with our heart. How do we choose who is going to be our friend? Is it in our hands? It does not seem to me that I decide a priori that I have to make friends with someone and work towards that! So how do we become friends with someone? I feel that I tend to become friends with people who like me as I am and who value me. This is only possible when some one lives according to his/her own real nature. To find some one who likes you as you are is akin to finding a treasure, why go behind people who don't care for you.

It is also said that the best friends we have are not the most compatible ones we could find but the ones who we get to find first. So there is an element of chance in friendship too. We rarely realize that we become so close to a person until the time comes when we have to depart. I find it amazing that life brings together people who are from very far off places, different languages, different cultures and many other differences and let the friendship bloom. Before they realize, the bond is formed an then there is that day when you have to depart and move on in life. This process repeats and it is this what makes life what it is.

Is the relation of friendship above all the petty feelings of jealousy, pride and personal ego? I do not want lie by saying that I never felt jealous of my friend who did better than me. I think it is human tendency. But the moment I realize that I am getting jealous, I replace jealousy with a feeling of pride -- that it is my friend who did better then me. It is a wonderful transformation; it motivates me to work harder and achieve better at the same time enjoying the success of my friends.

Why would the ability to make friends have evolved for humans? Our friends are least likely to be genetically related to us, especially for us who live in places far off from home. Hence we can not attribute the affinity that we show to our friends to the possibility of altruism to genetically related members of the species. Does the ability to make friends cause any fitness to an individual, or gene that has the ability?

A person could be judged by the friends he/she has. The friends have a tremendous effect on a person's life. Our friends reflect on our values and they affect our aspirations. If we don't think too much about the nature friendship and its evolutionary origins, it is a wonderful feeling to have friends who are concerned about you.

It is said that, when a person dies and is being cremated, if there are four friends who stay back to cry after everybody else has left, the person has had lived a wonderful life.

Speaking Versus Blogging

Speaking is one of the most common forms of communication. In our day to day life, whatever may be the career, speaking to each other, is inevitable. When two people (or more) speak to each other it becomes a conversation, and is generally the most effective way of communication. However as I observe in my own little surroundings, improper communication is also the most common cause of all mis-managed inter-personal relationships.

We speak for various reasons. We speak to share our experiences, relieve ourselves, or to explain some thing we know or to ask about some thing that we don't know or to just impress some one:-) In most of these cases, when we speak, we need to speak to a person! This is not so obvious because we can also speak to ourselves or can speak to God.

If you had ever thought about it, you would have realized that, the act of speaking is not as simple as it appears to be. There are many processes which are carried out without our consciousness. For instance, we should first decide on what is the message we want to convey. Then we have to frame the words and sentences that we want to speak, so that the message is conveyed to the listener. There is an additional step of translation if what we have to speak is not in our mother tongue. After all this,when we start to speak, it is very likely that we are interrupted in between by the listener. The flow of our thoughts is broken. This then causes additional difficulty. We have to understand what the listener had understood from our words. Then we try to carry out the entire process described above (think of message, phrase the words, translate) and try to clear the mis-understanding. All this has to be done without losing the sight of what we wanted to convey to start with. Generally it so happens that we spend time thinking what to say rather than listening to our conversation partner. If same is the case with the second person, then most likely none of the two can drive home the message to the other.

In the case of Blogging, like what i am doing now, we have sufficient time to think and re-think on what we want to say. We can read what we wrote from the perspective of the reader (not so easy probably!) We also have choice to phrase and re-phrase our words. And most importantly we are NOT interrupted from flow of our thoughts. We can say what we want to say to the completion. This may even improve clarity of what we want to convey. The price of this clarity is that, as you would have guessed it by now, it is much slower.

I hope You got a hint of why I am writing all this by now.. There are instances when what we want to convey is not straight forward. It may be to deal with emotions, to clear mis-understanding or just due to the complexity of the subject it self. In such cases, I guess it would be worth while to sit down and write what we want to say and hand over the written message to the concerned.

I feel that this is the main reason why Blogging has become one of the favorite means of sharing our opinions.. What do you think?!!

thoughts unthought

i have never thought that i would ever have a blog where words unspoken and thoughts unshared are blogged to boggle (y)our minds. i am sure it would be a great experience