(Spoilers Ahead…)

Anu Menon’s ‘Waiting’ is the rare little film that allows you to drift into its world, care for its predicaments, lap up as much positivity and poignance as you can, believe in the idea of organising grief, hope for its faces to think and behave like you do, and come away with an uneasy feeling of being none the closer to attaining closure.

The final shot shows Tara Deshpande (Kalki) and Shiv Kumar (Naseeruddin Shah) — both of whose comatose spouses are at opposite ends of the mortality spectrum — back in the hospital waiting room after spending the entire film making decisions for their own tiny families.

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Tara’s husband Rajat (Arjun Mathur) has been taken in for a crucial operation, one that she is vehemently against for his own sake. She wants him to run, travel and live life in the fast lane again, and she doesn’t quite fancy the idea of Rajat being weak and helpless. One doesn’t quite know if she is selfless or selfish here — if her naive idealism has forced her to not entertain thoughts of a slow recovery, or if she just can’t tolerate the fact that the lively man who set her pulses racing could now be a vegetable. The shift in dynamics of a young marriage, and the exorcism of all that was lovely and sexy and heady and dizzy about their honeymoon period, seems to be scaring her more than the fact that he may die. Will she be able to sustain her love for him by caring for him, or will she love him more by remembering the fine adventurous soul that he once was? She is the firebrand who lets herself be tamed by his zest for life — how will she burn the way he wants her if he must fight to breathe? All this, and nothing at all, is reflected on Tara’s face as she waits reluctantly, unsure of whether to be happy or sad that he may just survive. That they may never be young the way they want to. That hope of a life may come at the cost of living one. She has spent a month in the corridor coming to terms with the fact that they may just have had this conversation during one of their many post-coital cuddles. The girl-child in her is now becoming a lady, and even though it’s without him, it’s because of him.

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On the other hand, the retired professor next to her is startled by his own initiative. He has just taken his wife off the ventilator, after fighting his doctor for months, after accusing the hospital of being greedy and insensitive, and after lashing out at every single person who has indulged him. He doesn’t quite know what he is waiting for anymore. He has been unabashedly deluded and selfish about his wife’s chances, even though medical science tells him otherwise. In cruder terms, it’s like discovering that the girl you’ve fallen for on the internet is actually a guy, before proceeding to convince yourself that the situation isn’t so bad after all, because he’s a nice guy. Shiv, too, has convinced himself that his situation isn’t as shocking as it seems, and hope is not such a bad thing. Which is why he is also convinced that anyone who embraces reason is also embracing negativity. The world can never have enough hope. She has been on the ventilator for almost a year. “Did you sit down and talk to your wife about what you would do financially if she was on life-support?” is his logic, and he isn’t entirely wrong. But he knows, deep inside, that he is only grieving for her death while she’s still around. The sight of her comatose face every morning only allows him to postpone, and suppress, the inevitable epiphany of loss. He may as well be going to her grave instead of the hospital room, and it wouldn’t feel any different. He is only slowing the process down, slowing time down, hanging on to memories before they fade away, or before he actually gets some sleep.
Every morning, he is wide awake staring at the wall before the alarm rings. He is afraid to sleep because he is afraid to dream; everything about her will feel like a nightmare if he does. Perhaps now, after she sleeps, knowing that she may never wake up, he will go to bed — their bed — and mourn her the way she deserves to be mourned. He will grieve the way any lover must. After admitting to her about a flimsy affair 30 years ago, he feels like perhaps this useless confession will leave him lighter, knowing fully well that all he is trying to do is get her to react. To wake up. To forgive him, or even leave him, if that means she will be alive.

With that final blank face, which resembles that of a child who isn’t quite sure what to do in a hospital with older people around, Shiv shares his private space for memory bubbles with Tara quietly. It was never going to end with a smile — life never does — but who says anything is ending?