Volume 5 Chapter 4: The Card and the Curtain”
The rain had eased into a mist by the time Aarav dropped her home. The city felt softer, but her skin still hummed with the memory of the studio — the music, the space between his words, the dangerous patience in his eyes.
On her bedside table lay the small, cream-colored card his manager had slipped her. A location. A time. No explanation.
She turned it over between her fingers, listening to the faint hum of the ceiling fan. The power had gone out in half the neighborhood, and the only light came from a streetlamp outside, cutting a pale stripe across her bed.
Mumbai slept in fragments. Kamini didn’t.
The next evening, the address led her to a private gate in Juhu, guarded but discreet. No flashbulbs, no crowds. Just the muted sea air and the scent of rain-soaked earth.
Inside, the house was more a sanctuary than a mansion — low lights, polished wood, walls lined with books and photographs from decades of cinema. She recognized faces from film history, men and women whose eyes told stories even in stillness.
Aarav stood near a grand window, phone in hand, speaking in low Hindi. His gaze flicked to her as she entered, and the conversation ended mid-sentence.
“You came,” he said simply.
“I don’t usually walk into unknown invitations,” she replied, slipping her bag off her shoulder. “But this one… was curious.”
He smiled faintly. “Curiosity is where good stories start.”
They walked through a hallway that smelled faintly of sandalwood, stopping before a half-drawn curtain. Behind it, she could hear the faint murmur of voices, the shuffle of papers, and the occasional metallic clink.
He didn’t move the curtain. Instead, he looked at her. “What I’m about to show you… you don’t talk about it outside this house. Not yet.”
She nodded, pulse quickening.
The curtain swept aside to reveal a small but bustling set — not for a film, but for a workshop. Four young actors, scripts in hand, circled around a table. A woman in her fifties was giving them sharp, precise notes.
“This,” Aarav said softly, “is where I test people. Away from cameras. Away from the industry’s noise.”
Her eyes followed the group. The actors were raw but electric, throwing themselves into every line. The woman — a former theatre director, Aarav explained — was relentless, pushing them to strip away everything but truth.
“You’ll join them,” he said, turning to her.
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
Kamini felt the room close in, every pair of eyes flicking toward her as Aarav introduced her name. The director handed her a few pages from a script, no time to prepare.
It was a scene about loss, but not the pretty kind. A sister telling her brother why she didn’t come to their mother’s funeral. The words were jagged, the pauses full of unspoken years.
Her first attempt stumbled — the sentences neat, too careful. The director stopped her with a sharp, “That’s polite grief. Try again.”
Something in Kamini cracked then — the rain on the bus stand, the smallness of her rented room, the way her mother’s voice could both protect and bind. She stopped acting. She spoke as if she were peeling skin from bone.
When she finished, the room was quiet. The director only nodded once. Aarav’s eyes, however, had that same dangerous patience… and something warmer beneath.
As the session ended, he walked her to the door. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we see if tonight was instinct… or the beginning of something bigger.”
The sea wind followed her out to the street. The card was still in her pocket, but now it felt like a key.
And Mumbai — for the first time — felt like it might be listening.
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