Between the Lines: The Literature of Waiting Rooms
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Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she talks about the hospitals, bus stands, and railway platforms—stories built on anticipation and suspension in South Asian Literature.
A woman sits on a metal chair outside an orthopaedic ward, tapping her toe in a rhythm she cannot control. A child clutches a one-rupee coin at a bus stand, staring at the road as though willing the bus into existence. On a platform in Kolkata, two strangers share a packet of biscuits because the train is late again and there is nothing else to do but wait.
The subcontinent is a land of waiting for monsoons, for visas, for examination results, for miracles, for power cuts to end, for things to change, and for things to return to how they were. Perhaps this is why South Asian literature is so comfortable with suspension, with narratives that pause rather than progress, with stories that stretch time like dough between restless hands.
