Episode 4: The Play Within
697 Words
The script was ambitious. Dangerous, even.
A modern reimagining of Julius Caesar, fused with elements of contemporary political unrest, whispered queer identity, and the question: Who defines betrayal? It was to be their final statement before graduating. Their legacy.
The city buzzed with anticipation.
The auditorium was booked. Lights rented. Costumes stitched by hand. A month before opening night, rehearsals intensified. And so did the cracks beneath their feet.
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Casting Truth
Rwik insisted on playing Caesar.
“No one else can carry both charm and doom,” he’d said with a smirk.
No one disagreed.
Ishaan was cast as Brutus — loyal, idealistic, torn.
Arko would co-direct and write transitional monologues — ghostly narrations between acts, spoken not by actors, but by a disembodied voice — “The Spectator,” as he called it.
The monologues were sharp. Personal. Too personal.
> “We do not stab with daggers.
We wound with silence.”
Tara raised an eyebrow after reading it.
“Who is Brutus here, Arko?”
He didn’t answer.
She didn’t push.
But she read the monologue again. Slower this time.
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Anirban's Camera
Anirban documented everything.
Rehearsals. Mistakes. Glances. The way Mrittika touched Tara’s wrist while adjusting her bangles in Act II. The way Rwik lingered too long in the wings after delivering Caesar’s “Et tu” line.
He shot portraits of each of them — raw, close, unfiltered.
When Arko asked why, he said, “Because performance is where truth escapes unnoticed.”
One afternoon, he filmed Arko alone onstage, pacing.
“You never act,” he said.
“I do,” Arko replied, eyes locked on the ground. “I just don’t call it that.”
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Ishika’s Alarm
By the third week of rehearsals, Ishika had had enough.
She pulled Tara aside after a tech run.
“Something’s wrong.”
“With the lights?” Tara asked.
“No. With everything.”
She glanced at Anirban, who was adjusting a tripod near Rwik.
“They trust him too much.”
“He’s not the problem,” Tara replied.
Ishika’s voice dropped. “Then what is?”
Tara said nothing.
But later that night, when she brushed her fingers against Mrittika’s in the costume room, and Mrittika recoiled slightly — not out of shame, but out of fear — Tara knew.
The stage was haunted.
Not by ghosts.
But by truths trying to escape.
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Arko’s Descent
Arko stopped writing the last act.
He said he couldn’t find the words.
But the truth was — he couldn’t face them.
He watched Rwik laugh with Anirban under the stage lights. Watched the camera capture every moment. Watched the softness in Rwik’s voice when he called Anirban “sir,” then stopped mid-sentence and said, “No—Anirban da.”
That intimacy. That shift.
It broke Arko’s pen.
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The Mask Room
It was in the mask room that it happened.
It was late. Past midnight.
Arko had returned to fetch his scarf.
What he found instead was the door slightly open. The light low. Shadows moving.
Inside: Rwik and Anirban.
They weren’t kissing.
But their foreheads were touching.
Their breath synced.
Anirban said, “You don’t have to pretend here.”
Rwik whispered, “Then why does it feel like I still am?”
Arko backed away.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t speak.
He left the scarf behind.
And that night, he tore the final monologue from his notebook, ripped it into sixteen pieces, and dropped it into the Hooghly river.
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The Last Full Run
The last rehearsal before opening night was electric.
Rwik’s performance had reached something new — not theatre, but confession.
When Ishaan stabbed him as Brutus, Rwik didn’t say the famous line immediately.
He just stared.
Then whispered, “You too?”
And collapsed like a man whose heart broke long before the blade touched skin.
Everyone clapped.
But Arko didn’t.
He was staring at the back of the theatre, where the projector blinked once, then twice.
Anirban was editing something.
And Ishika was watching him.
Not the way she watched a man.
But the way you watch a wound form before it bleeds.
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- Writer
