The sense of an ending
Many things around us are ending. 2020 for example. But as long as we know that it’s not the end but just a sense of an ending, we can even savour the moment.
Sanjay Nagral
Dec 11, 2020, Mumbai Mirror
Do you remember how movies ended when we watched them in single screen theatres? After the hero successfully vanquished the villain in the climax, the theme song played in the background as the camera zoomed in on the heroine’s adoring eyes. To the accompaniment of dramatic music, the screen suddenly filled up with the expanding visual of two words ‘The End’. Finished. Time to get up and go home.
The world of cinema has moved on. The ends are less abrupt and even tentative. As the lights come on in the theatre, there are confused faces. Cinema has moved a step closer to real life.
British writer Frank Kermode first used the intriguing term in the title of his 1967 book ‘The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction’. He proposed that humans are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that their lives form only a miniscule period in the history of the world and that so much has gone before them and so much will come after. They therefore look for a ‘coherent pattern’ and invest in the idea that they are in the middle of a story. In order to make sense of their life, they find ‘consonance’ between a beginning, the middle and the end.
But it was the famous Julian Barnes novel in 2011 that made the term more known. His ‘The Sense of an Ending’ is narrated by protagonist Tony Webster, who, as he approaches old age, reflects back on his life. Tony’s otherwise mundane life is interrupted by a letter from an old friend which brings up several memories, some of them very uncomfortable. Neither the reader nor Webster himself can figure out how his life is slowly ending. Ritesh Batra, known for ‘Lunchbox’, created an exquisitely crafted movie version of Barnes’ book in 2017.
December heralds the end of one year and the beginning of another. We would of course want everything about 2020 to end. I don’t have to explain why. A year in which we saw the most diminutive of living organisms disrupt the collective hubris of the universe. And challenged our notions of disease and mortality. A pandemic that cocked a snook at some of the strongest healthcare systems in the world. And created a parallel epidemic of loss, grief, solitude and displacement.
Then there were the ripples in other spheres of life. Human interaction changed. Travel is no longer the same. Economies are being rejigged, corporations folding up, work is being redefined. And newspapers are closing down or moving to digital platforms.
Is the vaccine the final answer? Will it end the pandemic? I am neither an expert nor a futurologist, but the recent history of new viral infections tells us that there may not be an ‘end’ as we understand it. Certainly not soon. It took years to eradicate smallpox and polio at a time when the world was in some ways simpler.
Venal as it may seem there are facets of 2020 that I secretly hope will linger on, in the collective interest of the planet’s and its people’s health. For those who continue to die from treatable diseases like diarrhoea and TB. For the heightened interest in health infrastructure, funding and public medicine even from those who normally dismiss it as politics. For a state forced to intervene to control the so-called healthcare market. For the courage shown by ordinary citizens who we never saw on television but who worked on the ground to control the pandemic. For the realisation that when we were busy in internecine identity wars, the health system was deracinated from its primary objective.
What Mirror did Covid hold to our city’s famous healthcare? I wonder whether the editor had a premonition when I was asked to start this column a few weeks prior to Covid to give a ‘ringside view’ of healthcare. I have tried through observations, opinions and even not so subtle rhetoric; as through the struggles and stories of patients and their families.
More than anything, the column helped me navigate trying times. Despite my privileged life there were occasions when it seemed to be all over. Like in early May, during the lockdown, when my father passed away. As I went to the crematorium with the certificate, I saw a line of ambulances with families waiting for their turn. When I was informed that the earliest available slot was next morning as there was a large number of bodies expected from a public hospital. And when the mortuary attendant told me that many bodies were unaccompanied.
Or when the hospital where I worked closed down due to a large number of staff members catching Covid. When the parents of 18-year-old nurses who had left their homes from small villages in Kerala were pleading that they be released from a quarantine centre. And when after I had operated on my first patient with Covid, I waited with bated breath for my swab result. In such moments, the column was almost therapeutic.
Many things around us are ending. 2020 for example. But as long as we know that it’s not the end but just a sense of an ending, we can even savour the moment.