Srijani Dutta

Suffering, Struggle and Soliloquy: A Postmodernist Reading of Krishna Baldev Vaid’s None Other

This paper examines Krishna Baldev Vaid’s None Other (1992) through the lens of postmodern literary theory, focusing on the themes of suffering, alienation, and existential fragmentation. The novella presents the interior soliloquy of a nameless ageing protagonist whose reflections on pain, memory, and meaninglessness unfold without conventional plot or character development. By analysing the text’s fragmented narrative structure, intertextual references, and philosophical meditations, the study situates the work within the broader framework of postmodern literature. The protagonist’s monologue reflects a crisis of identity and purpose characteristic of postmodern consciousness, where certainty, truth, and stable meaning collapse into ambiguity. Drawing parallels with works such as T. S. Eliot’s Gerontion and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the essay explores how Vaid employs silence, repetition, and self-reflection to dramatize existential despair and the futility of human striving. Ultimately, the novella emerges as a lyrical yet unsettling meditation on loneliness, memory, and the fractured self, embodying the postmodern condition of uncertainty and the relentless search for meaning in an apparently indifferent universe.