Back to the Present

Imagine a world in which there is no time,8221; requested Alan Lightman midway in his 1993 novel Einstein8217;s Dreams. 8220;Only images....

Imagine a world in which there is no time,8221; requested Alan Lightman midway in his 1993 novel Einstein8217;s Dreams. 8220;Only images.8221; Thereupon, he proceeded to paint a variegated world with snapshots: changing seasons, flitting moods, betrayal, love, devotion, hope, grandeur, surprise, resignation, all frozen and framed. But that was just one possible world 8212; just one of the many meditations on the texture and essence of time 8212; Lightman dwelt upon in that literary debut, a palm-sized volume that seemed to capture infinity.

The year was 1905. Einstein, spending his waking and sleeping hours at the Bernese patent office, was putting to paper theories that would change forever our perceptions of past, present and future. He was dreaming of different, could-be worlds. And each option for the changing texture and shape of time would render human emotions and engagements differently. For instance, a world in which time is a circle: that is, a world in which everything will occur again, just like the last time, only we don8217;t know it, so parents will thrill in their child8217;s first laugh, unaware that the freshness of that guffaw will be gifted to them yet again. Or a world in which time moves faster the nearer one is to the centre of the earth: to stretch their lives, folks move to the mountains, the more innovative and resourceful reside in houses balanced on mile-high stilts; the pragmatic hurry through their tasks in lower reaches, the romantic and abandoned dwell in delight among depopulated lakesides and valleys. Or time moves fitfully: people get unexpected peeks into tomorrow, and seek to tailor their todays accordingly.

For the reader, Einstein8217;s Dreams not just confirmed the philosophical and whimsical overtures in the theory of relativity, it also articulated the many and ever changing ways in which we plan, punctuate and perceive our lives. That Lightman, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, appeared to be a poet masquerading as a writer of prose only completed the bewitchment.

In his latest novel, Reunion, Lightman once again explores time 8212; this time in relation to memory, its burdens and its kaleidoscopic illusions. And after his busy, voluminous Diagnosis 8212; about, among many other things, hurry sickness 8212; it marks a return to his Dreams form. It is spare and slow, and in this puzzle about time and memory, one finds oneself going back to the first book for clues.

Charles, a professor of humanities in a small college, has decided to attend his thirtieth college reunion. Wary as he is of feeling somewhat diminished in his moderate success, of appearing lonely in his divorcee status, it turns out that he has an appointment to keep. With his fragile and fracturing 22-year-old self. As his annoyingly boisterous classmates relive their youth in fancy dress, Charles is led back in time by visions of a transformative love affair with an ambitious ballerina, an affair whose unexpected conclusion is encoded in the novel8217;s beginning, but whose unresolved could-have-beens haunt long after it is read.

It8217;s the late sixties, for most a time for anti-war protest and mind-altering drugs. For young Charles, a time for wrestling and Emily Dickinson8217;s poetry. Hesitant by nature, in awe of his ballerina, confused about his peers8217; strident politics, he appears normal: your average boy-next-door on campus.

But not to Charles the elder. As he watches his past unfold, he writhes as his younger self wallows in the 8220;falseness of youth8221;, in the illusion that youth8217;s freshness will hold. The waste, the folly! 8220;I was sickened with envy,8221; he says as he looks. 8220;I could kick that young kid. When I gaze upon myself at twenty-two years old, see the unwrinkled skin, the taut body, the clear eyes, the raw power and passion8230; the world waited for me, and I was unconcerned.8221;

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It is a great betrayal. Charles the later calls out to Charles the earlier to beware, to embolden him with knowledge of the still hazy certainties and disappointments ahead. But the monologue works only one way. It8217;s only the present self that can hear its old self. It is only the present self that can draw insight from this chance meeting.

Time8217;s arrow is unwavering, yet rewarding. Charles may not be able to change tragic mis-steps in his past, but the attempt bears fruit. This re-acquaintance with his younger self smoothens embarrassing wrinkles in misconceived remembrances 8212; he finds that he did not after all violate basic rules of decency. Additionally, this discovery of the rigidity of the past highlights the fluidity of the present.

In one of Einstein8217;s dreams, the future was glimpsed, and it seemed no bad thing. Reunion is a sequel to that. Says Charles: 8220;I have been forced to watch as I strangle myself and am strangled by others. But who has forced me to watch? The beautiful twenty-two-year-old boy, full of magic and life and the power of not knowing the future. That8217;s it, isn8217;t it, the true source of his power: that his future remains unknown to him.8221; The blessings of time8217;s arrow! Maybe it is a glimpse of our yesterdays that helps illumine our todays.

Like his other books, Lightman8217;s novel is scaffolded with quantum theory, with philosophical interpretations of modern science. But that supporting framework remains invisible and unobtrusive. As, unexpectedly, does Juliana the ballerina, the object of Charles8217;s affections. But perhaps that8217;s as it should be. Perhaps in this conversation between past and present, she is just meant to be a prop.