Book name- VOICES IN THE WAITING ROOM
Author-Mayank Gupta
Published by- Rupa, Price- Rs 295
Waiting rooms can resound with whispers of anxiety, anticipation and perhaps hope. Mayank Gupta’s debut novel brings forth those muffled voices that wait to be released, recognised, and affect change.
Weaving together lives of a diasporic Indian medical community in the United States of America, Voices in the Waiting Room rustles with a myriad concerns to attest to the messiness that life offers. Instead of walking down the hospital corridors, the story ponders the humane behind the regimented medical lives. Despite its limited span, the novel throws open a wide range of issues — racial bigotry, hypermarginalisation, systemic corruption, social inequalities, educational reforms, Artificial Intelligence, medical practices across nations, debates on traditional versus modern medicine, ethics and morals in medical practice, even Azad Kashmir — a tad too many issues perhaps.
Gupta’s experiences as a medical practitioner enable him to put forth interesting insights. But at times, Voices in the Waiting Room appears to continuously add to the rhetorical conundrum without positing resolutions. It also has a peculiar rhythmic structure: short, crisp chapters interspersed with long ones filled with psychological musings, self-help advice, nostalgic longing that seem to carry Gupta’s stated commitment to put words to splintering and wobbly thoughts. The narrative is sprinkled with characters that mostly act as Gupta’s amplifiers. But Dr Silva’s character has been etched with some design, making Voices intriguing and pacy towards the end. The narrative follows the rags-to-riches style route and draws from the bildungsroman genre.
Curiously, for doctors, the deaths they encounter spur realisations in life. In Voices in the Waiting Room, the act of waiting, unlike Samuel Beckett’s notion, offers a sliver of hope that one day injustices that stifle living will be addressed so
that the matrix of life can accommodate more gratitude and humanity.
