Between the Lines: The Ordinary Face of Harm
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Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she writes about villians in South Asian literature.
Nobody wakes up wanting to be the villain
A villain is easiest to recognise at the end of a story. In the beginning, they look like everyone else. They make tea. They answer emails. They worry about ageing parents. They miss trains, forget birthdays, laugh at bad jokes, and believe, with complete conviction, that the next decision they make is the sensible one.
The trouble with literature, especially the finest literature, is that it arrives before judgement does. It asks us to spend time with people before deciding what to call them. By the time we have reached the final page, the word villain has often become too small for the life we have just witnessed.
Stories have always needed antagonists. Without resistance, there is no narrative. Yet the most memorable villains are rarely those who delight in cruelty for its own sake. They are the ones who force us to confront an unsettling possibility: that harm is often committed by people who consider themselves decent.
