Shiv Nataraj's wife from 40-year long marriage is in coma in ICU since last 8 months. Tara Deshpande's husband from a marriage that is barely few weeks old is brought to the same ICU after a road accident. Waiting is the story of how these two people cope with their grief. Your grief is your own, advises the wise Shiv (Naseeruddin Shah) to the impetuous Tara (Kalki Koechlin). The two cannot be more different from each other. While the older man (Naseeruddin Shah) appears to be stoic, he loses his cool when the doctor suggests that his wife be taken off the life support system. The younger woman (Kalki Koechlin) on the other hand is completely clueless and complains that not one of her numerous friends from facebook and twitter have come to the hospital to be by her side. Director Anu Menon doesn't have adequate material to stretch the film to even 98 minutes; so we have to endure flashbacks that add no value to the film. Many interactions meant to highlight the generation gap between Shiv and Tara tend to be frivolous and rob the film of its intensity. And there are songs! The duo also cast aspersions on the medical profession, which are robustly defended by the quirky but intelligent Dr Nirupam Malhotra (Rajat Kapoor). Other characters are reduced to caricatures in order to raise some laughs. Waiting could have been so much more poignant, had it stuck to its core theme of grief management to the exclusion of other distractions.
