# ▸ ACT ONE — SETUP · panels 1–16

by Unattributed

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# ▸ Act One — Setup · panels 1 to 16

Audio by Paper2Audio

# ▸ 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.*

---

# ▸ 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.

---

# ▸ 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.

---

## 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!

---

## 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?

---

# ▸ 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.

---

## 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.

---

## 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.*

# ▸ ACT ONE — SETUP · panels 1–16

# ▸ Act One — Setup · panels 1 to 16

Audio by Paper2Audio

# ▸ 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.***

---

## 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.***

---

## 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.

---

## 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.*

---

---

# ▸ 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.*

---

## 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.

---

## 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.*

---

## 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.*

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.*

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?

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.

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.

Jay (from inside, not turning around) Rah.

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.

Keecha Blue.

27. Suraj considers this. Suraj approves of this.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Nuvvu almost cheppav!

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.