Episode 2:The Circle
857 Words
They called themselves Agnipath — not in arrogance, but in reverence.
Not an official society. Not a registered club. Just a name whispered in hallways, scribbled on the backs of scripts and scrawled on poster walls across Jadavpur University. A movement. A current. A fire of the young.
Six of them. Students of Economics. Lovers of revolution. Creators of theatre.
They weren’t just friends — they were gravity. Each drawn to the other by an inexplicable, almost mythic force.
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The Stage Was Set
It began in the summer semester of 2009, when monsoon skies wept over Kolkata and the classroom lights flickered more often than the truth. The canteen smelled of burnt lentils, yellowed pages of Amartya Sen books were passed around like sacred scrolls, and the quad was where debates grew louder than lectures.
Arko Sen sat at the back of his class, notebook always half-closed. He never raised his voice. He didn’t need to. When he spoke, professors listened — because he never said anything unless it truly mattered.
He was the watcher.
He watched the world. Watched people fall in love. Watched stories unfold. Watched with eyes that were forever scribbling poems in his mind.
And he watched Rwik Dasgupta.
Rwik was everything Arko wasn’t. Loud. Beautiful. Alive.
He entered rooms like he was born to perform. Second-year student, already a campus star. Street theatre activist. Voice that could break into Tagore one moment and Jibanananda the next. He wore kurtas like they were armor, laughter like a war cry. And every time he took the stage, the city tilted slightly toward him.
Arko didn’t speak to him for the first three months.
He wrote about him instead.
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Enter the Women
Tara Chatterjee made her first impression by interrupting a professor mid-lecture.
“No offense, sir,” she’d said, “but Marx would’ve vomited on this handout.”
The room gasped.
She didn’t flinch.
She sat beside Arko one afternoon during a campus protest and handed him a samosa without a word. They didn't speak much that day. But Tara stayed beside him until the protest broke.
Tara met Mrittika Roy at a campus art competition. Mrittika didn't talk. She painted. Her work was surreal, fragmented, drenched in melancholy.
Tara said her art “looked like sadness dressed as a lullaby.”
Mrittika smiled. That was all.
Later that night, their fingers touched while pinning posters to a board. It was nothing. And everything.
They never labeled it.
They didn’t need to.
What they had was quiet, intense, real.
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The Twins
Ishaan Mukherjee and Ishika Mukherjee were opposites in motion.
Ishaan was calm, thoughtful, always in the eye of the storm. He read Kafka, volunteered at shelters, played cello at night. A still river.
Ishika was fire. Sharp, witty, rebellious. She ran debate clubs, climbed library shelves barefoot, and once slapped a professor for making a sexist joke. A volcano in disguise.
They lived in the same flat, took the same courses, but lived like two souls conjoined by fate.
Others often joked they were too close.
But those who saw them knew — it wasn’t romantic.
It was something deeper.
They protected each other with a kind of devotion that felt both holy and terrifying.
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Agnipath Is Born
The six met over one rehearsal.
Rwik was staging a radical adaptation of Tagore’s Chitrangada, blending gender identity with protest poetry.
He needed a writer. Arko submitted a monologue anonymously.
Rwik read it aloud in rehearsal. By the final line, the room was still.
“I need to meet who wrote this,” he said.
Arko stepped forward. Rwik stared.
“You don’t speak much.”
“I write instead,” Arko replied.
Tara clapped. Mrittika smiled.
Ishika raised an eyebrow.
From that moment, they moved like limbs of one body.
Arko wrote.
Rwik performed.
Tara led.
Mrittika painted.
Ishaan composed music.
Ishika organized logistics.
They skipped classes, staged performances in abandoned warehouses, argued over Satyajit Ray, and created plays that made professors cry and politicians nervous.
Their friendship was intense. Absolute. Addictive.
They made a pact under the banyan tree outside Gate No. 4.
“No matter what happens — no love, no jealousy, no politics — nothing breaks this.”
They all agreed.
Even Arko, who already loved someone.
Even Tara, whose fingers now trembled when they brushed Mrittika’s in passing.
Even Ishika, who had begun to panic at the idea of Ishaan becoming close to anyone else.
The seeds were planted.
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Unspoken Stories
None of them talked about love.
But it hung between them like smoke.
Arko and Rwik grew closer. Rwik would stay back after rehearsals, discussing character arcs, but his hand would linger on Arko’s shoulder. Arko never confessed. But he wrote every moment in his diary.
Tara and Mrittika shared secret glances. Shared silence. Shared heartbreak.
Ishaan once said Anirban Sanyal was his favorite documentarian.
Ishika flinched.
The unspoken was their common language.
Each carried secrets too tender for sunlight.
But all of them felt it.
Something was building.
And the entrance of the seventh shadow — Anirban — was just around the corner.
- Writer
