# ▸ ACT ONE — SETUP · panels 1–16

# ▸ Act One — Setup · panels 1 to 16

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# ▸ Act One — Setup · panels 1 to 16

## Page One

**1.** Wide. The colony, early morning, March. The open plot at the end of the lane — cleared, tarpaulin down, four blue drums of water, a folding table with paper packets stacked in a pyramid.*

Caption *(narration)*: The colony did this every year. Every year, somebody said it had been better before.

**2.** *A speaker on a plastic chair. A boy testing it badly. Bunting strung between two poles that will not survive the morning.*

**3.** *Padma Aunty at her third-floor window, watering, looking down at all of it with open suspicion. She has seen thirty of these.*

**4.** *And in the middle of the plot with a clipboard, at eight in the morning, in the least festive clothes present — **Aishwarya.***

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## Page Two

**5.** *Close: the clipboard. A tanker booking. A tarpaulin receipt. A list of names with ticks against them.*

*None of it will be mentioned by anyone, all day.*

**6.** *Somebody's uncle arrives with a steel vessel and a stack of tumblers and begins distributing them with the air of a man performing a civic duty.*

**7.** *He offers one to Aishwarya.*

*She looks at it. She looks at him. She hands it back.*

Aishwarya Naaku repu site visit undi.

**8.** *She is, and remains for the entire episode, the only sober adult present. **Draw her sober in every panel she is in.***

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## Page Three

**9.** *Boys H.Q, the stairwell. Suraj comes down at a run in a white shirt he has selected specifically to destroy.*

Suraj Randi Ra

**10.** *Kicha behind him, camera up, a bag of colour packets over one shoulder, already narrating to an audience of nobody.*

Keecha *(to lens)*: Friends. Ee roju — **war.**

**11.** *Anudeep at the bottom of the stairs, dressed normally, holding a coffee, with the expression of a man watching weather come in off the sea.*

Suraj Nuvvu ranava?

Anudeep Nenu chusthanu.

Suraj "Chusthanu" ante emi kaadu ra.

**12.** *A tumbler is offered to Anudeep by somebody's uncle who has followed them out.*

*He looks at it. He smiles politely. He does not take it.*

Anudeep Vaddu andi. Thank you.

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## Page Four

**13.** *He steps back out of the flow of it, up onto the low wall at the edge of the plot, coffee still in hand, entirely intact.*

*Behind him, through the open flat window: **eight film posters** in a row on the wall — and a calendar with a neat block of crossed-off days and **one square circled in pen.***

**14.** *He lasts eleven seconds.*

**15.** ***Chintu** — nine, does not know him, does not care, has been waiting behind a drum for exactly this — hits him square in the chest with a water balloon from four feet.*

S.F.X: Splat

**16.** Wide. Anudeep on a low wall, coffee gone, shirt ruined, pink from collar to waist, staring straight ahead at nothing. Chintu already running. Nobody has seen it happen except the reader.*

---

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# ▸ Act Two — Escalation · panels 17 to 40

## Page Five

**17.** It goes. Four panels, the plot at war, and it should be genuinely joyous.*

*Suraj taking colour from three directions at once, delighted, doing nothing whatsoever to defend himself.*

**18.** *Kicha assembling an alliance on the tarpaulin with tremendous seriousness — six people, a plan, hand signals, a designated flank.*

Keecha Manam **okatiga** untamu. Sare?

All Sare.

**19.** *He betrays it inside one panel. He turns and empties an entire packet over the nearest ally's head at point-blank range.*

**20.** *Total collapse. Six-way war. The alliance lasted four seconds, and Kicha filmed all of it, including his own treachery, which is the part he is proudest of.*

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## Page Six

Cut — up, and quiet.*

**21.** *Anudeep — pink, wet, cornered against a wall by two more children — does the only thing available to him and goes up the stairs.*

**22.** *Past his own floor.*

**23.** *And stops on the top landing in front of **Jay's door**, which is ajar.*

*He stands there. He is a pink man dripping onto a stranger's landing. He knocks anyway.*

**24.** *Two lines. That is the entire scene.*

Anudeep Rana?

Jay *(from inside, not turning around)* Rah.

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## Page Seven

**25.** *Back down. The tumblers have gone round a second time. Nobody is counting.*

**26.** *Kicha holds up a packet and explains an economic decision to Suraj at volume:*

Keecha Nenu **oke colour** thecchanu ra. Bulk lo. Cheap.

Suraj Ye colour?

Keecha **Blue.**

**27.** *Suraj considers this. Suraj approves of this.*

Suraj Entha blue?

Keecha *(gesturing at a bag containing a genuinely unreasonable quantity)* Anthaa blue.

**28.** *The plot goes from multicoloured to monochrome in about ninety seconds and everybody just accepts it, because there is nothing else left in the bag.*

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## Page Eight

**29.** the State of them. Suraj, comprehensively blue. Scalp, ears, teeth, the inside of his collar.*

**30.** *Kicha, identically blue. Sunglasses blue. Camera lens smeared blue. Still filming through it.*

**31.** *And — **drawn, never stated** — the two of them are now moving differently. Slower. More carefully. Suraj is having a conversation with a plastic chair. Kicha is examining his own hand at close range with genuine scientific interest.*

*Nobody says a word about it. Nobody will, all episode.*

**32.** ⭐ Spine Beat.** *And Kicha turns the camera around and films **himself.***

*Two seconds. A blue man, grinning, alone in frame, at the loudest moment of the loudest day of the season.*

*It is the **only footage of Kicha in the entire documentary.** He will not remember doing it.*

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## Page Nine

Cut — up again. **Wide, still, generous white. The format change should be felt in the body.***

**33.** *Jay's penthouse. Quiet. The window. Below and outside it, all the colour and all the noise, small.*

*Two men at the window with two cups. Neither of them has any colour on him except the pink Anudeep arrived in.*

**34.** *One long panel of nothing at all. They watch the colony.*

**35.** *And Jay says the only thing he says upstairs.*

Jay Nuvvu ekkuva sepu ikkada untavu ani anukoledu.

Anudeep Nenu kuda.

**36.** *He does not go back down. He stays two hours.*

*Neither of them mentions it after today — not this episode, not any other.*

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## Page Ten

**37.** Cut — the plot, four in the afternoon. Winding down. Wreckage. Wet tarpaulin. A hundred paper packets trodden into the mud.*

**38.** *Suraj's phone rings. **Pinky.** He answers it while blue.*

Suraj Haan… haan, nenu ochesthanu— *(beat)* — nuvvu **cover** chesava? … Sare ra. Thanks.

Keecha *(off, blue, from somewhere)*: Daaniki thanks cheppaku!

Suraj Adi **shift** ra. Adi rivalry kaadu.

*(That is the whole Pinky beat. She covered their shift so they could have a festival. Nobody dwells on it.)*

**39.** ***Ravi anna** comes down the lane from Kopitam with chai for the men filling the drums, unasked, twice, and goes back. He does not get colour on him. Nobody would dare.*

**40.** *And the two of them decide to ride home.*

*It is four hundred metres. There are two helmets on the bike. **They take both off and leave them on the wall**, for reasons that are entirely clear to them and to nobody else in the world.*

---

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# ▸ Act Three — Turn · panels 41 to 52

## Page Eleven

**41.** *The Honda Shine. Two blue men. Four in the afternoon. Doing perhaps eighteen kilometres an hour, with enormous concentration.*

**42.** *A junction. A traffic constable steps out and raises one hand.*

**43.** *They stop. Very carefully. Almost impressively carefully.*

**44.** *The constable — nineteen years of service, a receipt book, no interest in anything at all — states the entire offence in his first line.*

Constable Helmet ledu.

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## Page Twelve

**45.** *Neither of them hears it. Because both, independently, in the same half-second, have concluded that they are being arrested for something else.*

**46.**

Suraj Sir— sir, nenu **rendu** matrame—

Keecha *(immediately, over him, both hands up)* Naaku telusu sir. Tappu. Naadi tappu. **Vaadu cheppadu naaku.**

Suraj NENU Cheppana?!

**47.** *The constable looks down at his receipt book. He does not write anything yet.*

**48.**

Keecha Sir, adi **glass** lo undi sir, nenu adagaledu ekkada nunchi vachhindo—

Suraj Maa colony lo mama okaru unnaru sir, aayana **prathi sanvatsaram**—

Keecha Vaadi peru cheppaku ra!

Suraj Nenu cheppaledu!

Keecha Nuvvu **almost** cheppav!

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## Page Thirteen

**49.** Wide. A traffic constable standing at a junction holding a receipt book, waiting, while two blue men confess to him at speed.*

*He has been doing this nineteen years. He does not want to know. **His face does not change once.***

**50.** *They run out. Silence. Both breathing hard, blue, braced for the worst thing that has ever happened to them.*

**51.** *He clicks his pen.*

Constable Vey nooru.

*Beat.*

Constable **Helmet ki.**

**52.** *Two panels' worth of deflation in one.*

Suraj *(very small)*: …helmet ki aa?

Constable Helmet ki.

Keecha *(smaller)*: …anthena?

Constable *(not looking up, tearing the challan off)* Ekkuva kavala?

---

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# ▸ Act Four — Landing · panels 53 to 64

## Page Fourteen

**53.** *The stairwell. Two blue men coming up, silent, one challan between them.*

**54.** *And coming **down** — Anudeep. Dry. Calm. Still faintly pink at the collar. **From the wrong floor.***

**55.** the Landing. Three people, one staircase. Nobody asks anybody anything.*

Suraj Nuvvu **paina** unnava?

Anudeep Haan.

Suraj …sare.

**56.** *That is the entire acknowledgement that the biggest development of the season receives.*

*They go up. He goes down. Kicha, blue, does not raise the camera, and could not have told you why.*

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## Page Fifteen

**57.** *Evening. The flat. Colour on everything. **Muddamma** crosses the frame with a bucket, looks at the floor, looks at the two blue men, and says nothing whatsoever.*

*(On the wall behind her: eight posters. And the calendar.)*

**58.** *The bathroom. Suraj scrubbing. The blue is not coming off. It is barely lightening.*

Suraj Kicha.

Keecha (O.P.):** Cheppu.

Suraj Idi **rendu rojula** lo poddha?

Keecha (O.P.):** *(pause)* Adi… **permanent kaadu.**

*(⭐ Note for the artist: **he does not say "idi temporary."** He gets to the very edge of the sentence, in the mouth of the wrong man, and goes around it. Anudeep is not in the room and does not hear it. **The refrain is absent from this episode entirely.**)*

**59.** *Aishwarya on the rail, having done nothing all day except make the entire thing happen, looking down at the wrecked plot.*

**60.** *Anudeep comes out onto the balcony. She looks at him — the pink collar, the dry hair, the two unaccounted-for hours.*

Aishwarya Nuvvu ekkada unnav?

Anudeep Paina.

Aishwarya *(beat — and she files it)* Sare.

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## Page Sixteen

**61.** *Night. Kicha props the phone against the pickle tumbler and sets a timer.*

**62.** the Photograph. Full panel, taken from the phone's point of view: **Suraj and Kicha, evenly and comprehensively blue from scalp to sandal**, standing on either side of the Honda Shine like two Avatar characters who have been to a wedding. Both grinning. Both destroyed.*

S.F.X: *click.*

**63.** *Kicha tapes it to the wall — **beside** that week's film poster, the ninth. The first thing on the poster wall that isn't a poster.*

*It stays there for the rest of the series.*

**64.** Wide, from the dark lane. The building. One lit window. **Blue handprints** on the balcony rail, on the doorframe, on the wall beside the stairs.*

*And on the top floor, a light on behind a door standing slightly open.*

Caption *(narration)*: The colour came off everything in about a week.

Caption *(narration)*: Almost everything.

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## End of Episode 8

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