▸ 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. Boys H.Q. 12 40 AM The wide, at night — inverter light, one tube, the fan turning. Four people horizontal in the specific way of people who have been horizontal for two hours.

Behind them: the frame on the wall with Friday's film still in it, and the calendar. Four weeks to the circle.

Caption (narration): Nothing had happened all day. Nothing was going to.

2. Suraj on the floor, phone above his face. Kicha upside down on the sofa. Anudeep at the table with a laptop closed in front of him, doing nothing at all. Aishwarya on her own rail, chin on her arms, doing nothing at a different address.

3. Nobody speaks for a full panel.

4. And Suraj says the sentence that costs everybody three hours.

Suraj: Naaku biryani thinali anipisthundi.

Page Two

5. Nobody moves. But something changes in the room's air pressure.

Aishwarya: Ippudu okkati kuda open ledu. Suraj: Naaku telusu. Aishwarya: Appudu enduku cheppav? Suraj: Cheppanu. Anthe.

6. Kicha's head comes up off the sofa, upside down, sunglasses somehow still on.

Kicha: …Shadab open untundi.

7. Anudeep: Shadab ekkada? Kicha: Chala doorm. Anudeep: Entha door? Kicha: (beat) Adi important kaadu.

8. Wide. Four people looking at each other. Nobody has agreed to anything. Everybody knows.

Page Three

9. The stairwell at one in the morning. Four people going down it, none of them dressed for anywhere.

Aishwarya: Nenu radhu. Suraj: Sare.

10. Next panel. She is on the stairs with them, jacket on.

Aishwarya: Nenu radhu ani chepta unnanu. Kicha: Vinnamu.

11. The lane. The Honda Shine — and a second bike Kicha has produced from somewhere, which he wheels out with the confidence of a man who has not thought about tomorrow.

Kicha: Adi nadi kaadu, kaani adi naadi.

(⭐ Do not draw a number plate. Not once, all episode, until panel 56.)

12. the Pairing — and it is the wrong one, deliberately. Suraj and Aishwarya on the Shine. Which leaves Anudeep and Kicha, standing next to a bike, alone together for the first time in the series.

Page Four

13. They ride. Empty flyover, sodium light, a city with the sound turned down. The "nothing" page and it should be allowed to breathe.

14. ⭐ the Man with the Handi. And at the bottom of the flyover, on the service road — one bandi, one bulb, one steel handi, three plastic stools. A man in a lungi, alone, ladling.

Steam coming off it. You can smell this panel.

15. All four of them slow down. All four of them look. And Suraj — Suraj, who wanted this at twelve forty in the morning — waves it off.

Suraj: Vaddu ra. Kicha: Enti vaddu? Suraj: Manam Shadab ki velthunnamu.

16. Wide, from behind the cart. Two bikes accelerating away from a man with a full handi at one in the morning.

Caption (narration): That was the whole story. The rest is just the part where they found out.

▸ Act Two — Escalation · panels 17 to 40

Page Five

17. Shadab. Shutters down. A chain. A padlock the size of a fist.

18. Four people standing in front of it in total silence.

19. Suraj: Nuvvu open untundi annav. Kicha: Nenu untundi anna. Undi ani analedu.

20. Aishwarya, already back on the bike, entirely unsurprised:

Aishwarya: Randi. Intiki. Suraj: Vaddu. Aishwarya: Suraj. Suraj: (and here it is) Aa bandi.

Page Six

21. Four heads turn. The realisation arrives in all of them simultaneously and it is the happiest anybody will be all night.

Kicha: Aa bandi! Suraj: A.A Bandi Ra—

22. the Ride Back. Genuinely thrilling, played completely straight — two bikes going the wrong way down a service road at half past one with four people who have never wanted anything more.

23. ⭐ Spine Beat. Kicha riding one-handed, phone up in the other, filming the road, filming Suraj on the other bike, filming nothing.

The footage will be a blur and a wind roar and completely unusable. He keeps every second of it.

24. And Anudeep, on the back, over the noise, because there is nothing else to do:

Kicha: Nuvvu naatho maatladavu ra. Anudeep: Nenu andaritho maatladatanu. Kicha: Andaritho ne. Naatho kaadu.

Anudeep has no answer to that, because it is true, and Kicha does not press it. He just drives.

Page Seven

25. The service road. The bulb.

26. The man is packing up. The handi is on the ground. The lid is off.

27. Suraj is off the bike before it has stopped.

Suraj: Anna— anna, rendu—

28. The man does not look up. He says one word and keeps packing.

Cart Man: Ayipoyindi.

Page Eight

29. Four people standing in front of an empty handi they were sitting next to, on a bike, forty minutes ago.

30. Nobody blames Suraj out loud. Everybody looks at him. It is much worse.

31. Suraj: …cheppandi ra. Aishwarya: Emi cheppamu? Suraj: Emaina cheppandi. Ee la choodakandi.

32. And Kicha — who has ruined this evening once already and has learned nothing — puts a hand up.

Kicha: Naaku oka ice cream parlour telusu.

Page Nine

33. Anudeep: Manam biryani kosam vachhamu. Kicha: Adi open untundi ra. Aishwarya: Nuvvu Shadab gurinchi kuda ade annav. Kicha: Adi vere matter.

34. They go. Because it is two in the morning and there is no longer any such thing as a bad idea.

35. The ride. Nobody talking. Aishwarya's face on the back of the Shine, staring into the middle distance, doing the arithmetic on her own life.

36. They arrive.

Page Ten

37. Wide. A shuttered ice cream parlour. A rolled grille. A padlock. A dead neon sign.

38. Nobody says anything for one full panel.

39. Aishwarya: Kicha. Kicha: Cheppaku. Aishwarya: Nenu emi analedu. Kicha: Nuvvu almost annav.

40. 2 40 AM Four people sitting on the kerb outside a shut ice cream parlour. Morale is a memory.

▸ Act Three — Turn · panels 41 to 52

Page Eleven

41. Suraj finds a folded newspaper somebody has left on the kerb and reads it because there is nothing else to do.

42. Close on his face. It changes.

43. He turns the paper around and holds it up. We do not read it. We only see three other faces going the same way his did.

44. Small inset: a corner of a page. A grainy photograph of a stretch of road. A headline we can see the shape of and not the words.

Kicha: (instantly professional, instantly wrong) Adi maa channel story ra. Nenu cover chesanu. Suraj: Nuvvu Cover chesava?

Page Twelve

45. the Panic, full flower. Everyone reacts in character and none of them the same way.

Suraj, on his feet, holding the paper at arm's length like it is wet:

Suraj: Idi ee road ra. Manam ippude ee road meeda vachhamu.

46. Aishwarya, immediately, ruthlessly practical:

Aishwarya: Enni gantalaki ani rasadu? Adi ee stretch aa, aa pakka stretch aa? Kicha: (consulting his own memory of his own article) …ee stretch. Aishwarya: Sare. Manam ippudu kurchuni unnamu ee stretch meeda.

47. Anudeep, catastrophising in ascending order of unlikeliness:

Anudeep: Naaku visa interview undi. Kicha: Daaniki deenki sambandham enti?! Anudeep: Naaku teliyadu ra. Naaku ippudu anni sambandham la ne anipisthunnayi.

48. ⭐ And Suraj rounds on Kicha, and it is the funniest line in the episode and also completely true:

Suraj: Nuvvu unna prathi chota oka deyyam katha untundi ra! Suraj: Manam unde illu ki peru enti? Deyyam Illu. Evaru pettaru? Nuvvu. Kicha: Adi naaku pedda compliment ra. Suraj: Adi Compliment kaadu.

Page Thirteen

49. Decision, unanimous, unspoken, instantaneous. Everybody is on a bike within four seconds.

50. They ride. Fast. Nobody looking left.

51. *And two hundred metres in — *

S.F.X: Baam — fsssshhhhh

52. Kicha's back tyre, gone. The bike wobbling to a halt in the middle of an empty road at three in the morning, with two men on it and nowhere to be.

Kicha: …ade cheppanu kada. Anudeep: Nuvvu emi cheppaledu.

▸ Act Four — Landing · panels 53 to 64

Page Fourteen

53. They push it. All four of them, in a line, down an empty road, at three in the morning.

54. They push it for a long time. Give this two panels and no dialogue.

55. And then, by unanimous silent agreement, they stop pushing it.

Suraj puts the stand down. Aishwarya is already walking. Nobody discusses it.

56. ⭐ the Reveal. Wide, from behind, as the four of them walk away from a bike parked on the side of an empty road.

And the panel finally shows us the number plate, and the sticker on the tank, and a keyring hanging from the ignition with a small enamel charm on it that is not remotely Kicha's taste.

Anudeep: …Kicha. Idi evari bandi? Kicha: (not turning round, walking faster) Adi… Pinky di.

Beat.

Suraj: Pinky Di A.A? Kicha: Daaniki ee roju off. Adi adagadu. Aishwarya: Adi repu adugutundi ra. Kicha: Appudu repu problem.

Page Fifteen

57. The stairwell, up. Everyone dead on their feet.

58. The flat door. Light under it.

59. Anudeep opens it.

60. Wide. The table. Jay, awake because he is always awake, off the night shift — sitting in front of a very large open biryani container, eating unhurriedly.

And on the container, in large friendly letters: Shadab.

Page Sixteen

61. Nobody speaks for a full panel. Four people in a doorway at half past three in the morning looking at a box.

62. Suraj: …adi moosi undi. Jay: Swiggy chesanu. Suraj: Adi Moosi Undi Ra. Manam akkade unnamu. Chain undi.

63. Jay takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. And delivers it entirely without malice, which is what makes it unsurvivable.

Jay: Munde shutter moostaru. Venuka door teruchi ne untadi. Jay: Delivery vaallu venuka nunchi ne teesukuntaru.

Beat.

Jay: Meeru venakki vellara?

64. Wide, Still. Four people in a doorway, four hands going to four faces at the same moment, in perfect silence.

And then somebody sits down, and then everybody sits down, and one container is opened out in the middle of five people with five spoons that do not match — Aishwarya inside the flat, at the table, and nobody has ever remarked on that and nobody ever will.

On the table beside them: Kicha's phone, face down, red light off, not filming this.

Caption (narration): Two shut shutters, one empty handi, one abandoned motorcycle and a ghost story. Caption (narration): It had been on that table since eleven, and it had been open the whole time, around the back.

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