Story Overview of “Coma”:

“Coma” is a contemplative narrative exploring themes of loneliness, existential uncertainty, and the blurred boundaries between life and death. The story unfolds in a hospital setting, where the protagonist, gripped by an undefined sorrow, sits indifferently by the bedside of a comatose patient. The oppressive atmosphere is heightened by metaphoric descriptions of night and dawn, symbolising despair and the faint hope of renewal.

As the protagonist reflects on his connection to the patient, memories surface—moments of companionship, shared tea, and existential conversations about loneliness and mortality. The hospital, depicted as a bridge between life and death, becomes a stage for the protagonist’s internal struggle. He encounters other figures, some veiled, representing the facelessness of grief and the universal experience of loss.

The narrative is punctuated by surreal and dreamlike sequences, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination. The protagonist grapples with the idea of masks—literal and metaphorical—questioning authenticity and the ways people hide their pain. The motif of the “locked house” and “lost key” further emphasises themes of isolation and the inaccessibility of true connection.

Ultimately, “Coma” is less about the specifics of a medical crisis and more about the psychological and emotional states evoked by waiting, uncertainty, and confronting mortality. The story leaves the reader with an impression of unresolved grief and the enduring question of what it means to be truly alive or already buried by one’s loneliness.

(For a detailed story overview with themes and symbolism, click here.)

COMA

The night’s casket contained all that it had been carrying ever before. But the morning that followed was even crueller, more heartless, and much more horrible and hideous.

‘My Lord! Let the night that had passed away return, and let the light of the day fade far away, hiding its face, into the distant forests and wilderness, so that he didn’t have to unveil his face and expose its contours in the morning light?’

He was sitting in the chair with such indifference, as though he had no interest in the sick man. Why then had he come to the hospital? Who compelled him to go there? These questions that he had hitherto been ignoring popped up in his mind and pressed for an answer. He did not attach any importance to them, as he was already under the grip of an unknown and overpowering grief, which called his existence into question. That question challenged his survival, and he was trying to come to terms with it. In that process, the quest for an answer to his concern for the sick man had lost its importance.

Loneliness had an unusual shade today. Apprehensions, confusions, distances, life’s propinquity, death, virtue, vice, the desire to gain and to lose, and the black snake lying coiled on the grave of desire, all compounded his loneliness.

Coma . . . coma . . . coma! How much poison was filled in this word! When a person arrives at this stage, their conscious mind stops functioning.

He now stood at the head of his hospital bed, waiting for his frozen lips to shake even a little, so that he might remind him that he . . .

But no! He lay still on his bed, taking the last breath of his life, surrounded by doctors and nurses.

“How’s he now, Doctor!”

“He may survive!”

“Doctor, there is still some hope left. His frozen lips sometimes . . .”

“Yes, I too felt he was wriggling to say something as if for the last time.”

The doors of his house had also been locked like his lips for ages. Their keys were lost. Spiders might have spun webs in every nook and corner of the house, and birds might have built their nests there.

Death, keys, the lock and the locked house – utter confusion overtook him.

“He may survive, he may not.”

There were times when he came to his house every day. He would stay there, gossiping all day long, rousing everybody to laughter, and sometimes dramatically shedding tears, like an accomplished stage actor.

“Bhabhi, I really like the tea you prepare. I don’t even enjoy whisky as much as your tea.”

“You chatty fellow!”

The huge old hospital was situated on the main street of the town in such a way as to give the feeling that there was little distance between life and death.

Every day, he passed through that street as though it weren’t a road, but a ‘Pulsirat’.

He got up from his chair all of a sudden and headed towards his office. The office was deserted, and the staff had left. A peon was climbing down the stairs, carrying a file under his arm.

“Listen! Would you check if Madam is in the staff room?”

“No, sir! The staff room is closed. Everybody has left.”

“She didn’t wait for a while! She should have stayed at least today,” he thought.

“Bhabhi, this is for you. It’s your birthday gift.”

“You know, my husband doesn’t even remember my birthday.”

Talking of her husband, she fumbled through the labyrinth of memory, and remembered what she had asked him once, “Suppose I suddenly die one day. What would you do then?

Wouldn’t you marry another woman, as an excuse for your loneliness, only a few months after throwing me to the dust?”

“Do you consider me like one of those men, who have…”

“I know what you want to say. But I don’t want somebody entering the house and going away, just like a gust of wind.”

“When a street actor changes his guise, he sometimes has to play the role of a serious character. But in my view, both of them are just jesters. Do you agree with me?”

“No. The difference is that some are not interred after they die, and some who are interred by themselves while they are still alive.”

“I never thought what would happen next. I have always prostrated myself on the threshold of today. I have no concern for the approaching tomorrow. Today you are there with me, and for me, this is the greatest reality.”

Standing at the entrance of his house, he looked wistfully at those muddling shadows. He was caught in the grip of a mysterious grief. It posed a question to him and challenged him to answer. But when questions become a challenge, answers no longer remain important.

He was not alone there. Others with him had black veils on their faces. But his face was without any veil.

“Wear a mask on your face; otherwise, you would fall into the lowest region of agony.”

And then all at once, his hands rose to his own face. He felt as if his face was also covered with a veil, like the others.

“You’ve still time. Go, wear a face mask!” the same voice rose again.

Everything seemed like a dream to him.

The melancholy of the afternoon was slowly giving way to the shadows of the evening. His steps were moving towards the hospital, as if under a spell.

The quiet road adjacent to the hospital was overcrowded with a sea of people today. They were all looking slyly at one another, shouldering the burdensome records of their deeds.

He, too, had a worn-out basket, brimming with the records of his own deeds; but in fact, stored in it since long, lay the accounts of someone else’s days and nights and not his own.

Before him, now stood the washed-out building of the pharmacy, raising its head. This was the place he had to go.

Crossing the lawn of the hospital, when he reached the lift beside the staircase, his eyes were drawn up towards the small board which informed that ‘THE LIFT IS OUT OF ORDER TODAY’.

Climbing up the stairs of the pharmacy, he once again felt like walking on the Pulsirat.

“The patient in room number twenty-seven is still fighting with death.”

His steps halted for a moment.

“One who possesses such great courage to fight death would undoubtedly emerge, by all means, from the suffocating atmosphere of the hospital.”

“Here! The doctor has arrived now!”

“Perhaps the patient in room number twenty-seven . . .”

He stopped and asked, “Doctor, is he going to survive? I don’t want him to stay alive anymore.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not wrong, doctor. I am telling this quite sensibly to you.”

“Some people don’t get interred even after death; some are interred while they are still alive.”

“But the patient in twenty-seven has already…”

His feet, for one last moment, seized walking.

He was not alone on the Pulsirat now. Others too were walking with him. They all had their faces covered with black veils. Only his face was not veiled.

“Put a mask on your face lest you might fall upside down!”

He looked down with half-open eyes.

The quiet road adjacent to the hospital was crowded with many people today. They were all looking wistfully at one another, carrying the heavy burden of the records of their deeds.

***

Read the original story in Urdu