Episode 1: The Wounded Sparrow

Episode 1: The Wounded Sparrow

Time Period: 1970s – Kolkata

Lie: Idealization of love.

The Revolutionary’s Muse

The sun dipped low over College Street, casting the crumbling facades of colonial buildings in hues of gold. Vendors called out to students haggling over second-hand books while a crowd gathered at the center of the street. Ananya Chatterjee clutched her notebook tightly as the chants grew louder. She wasn’t one for crowds, but she had heard about him—Indranil Roy, the firebrand speaker, the revolutionary leader who could ignite flames with his words.
She spotted him standing on a makeshift dais, his voice booming over the noise. “We will no longer live as slaves!” he shouted, his sharp Bengali cutting through the air. “The land belongs to us—the workers, the farmers, the students!”
Ananya wasn’t a revolutionary, not yet. She came here to observe, maybe to write. But the way his voice carried, the way he held the crowd in the palm of his hand, made her feel something unfamiliar.
“Are you here to join the cause or to admire from a distance?” a voice beside her teased.
She turned to see her friend, Ritu, smirking. “You should go home, Ananya. You’re too soft for this.”
“I’m just watching,” Ananya replied, trying to ignore the way her heart raced as Indranil spoke. “You go if you’re so bored.”
Ritu rolled her eyes. “Watching is dangerous, too.”
As the crowd began to disperse, Ananya lingered. She didn’t know what she was waiting for until he approached, his shirt sweat-stained but his demeanor calm, almost regal. He noticed her, his eyes lingering on the notebook in her hands.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, clutching it tighter.
He smiled faintly. “Nothing doesn’t make you hold it so close. Can I see?”
Hesitantly, she handed it over. He flipped through the pages, reading her poems in silence. “You wrote these?”
She nodded, her cheeks burning.
“They’re beautiful,” he said, looking up. “You have a gift.”
His praise left her breathless. “Thank you,” she managed.
“Poetry has power,” he continued. “Words can inspire. Change the world.” He handed the notebook back. “You should come to the next meeting. We could use a voice like yours.”
Ananya watched him disappear into the crowd, her heart pounding.
Love and Revolution
Over the weeks that followed, Ananya became a regular at Indranil’s meetings. He quoted her poems during his speeches, calling her his “muse.” His admiration felt intoxicating, almost too good to be true.
One evening, as they walked along the Hooghly River, he said, “You’ve made me a better speaker, you know. Your words give my speeches fire.”
She blushed. “I only write what I feel.”
“And you feel deeply,” he replied, stopping to face her. “That’s rare.”
The way he looked at her, as if she were the only person in the world, made her believe in the future he promised—a world of equality, freedom, and love.
But cracks began to show. At meetings, he ignored her concerns, dismissing them as “too emotional.” When she wrote a poem about her late father, he altered the lines to fit the movement’s rhetoric.
“It’s not personal,” he said when she protested. “It’s for the greater good.”
The Breaking Point
One evening, the police raided their meeting. Tear gas filled the room as activists scattered. Ananya stumbled out, coughing, her notebook clutched tightly. She made her way to Indranil’s safehouse, expecting comfort, but found him surrounded by comrades, deep in discussion.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said when he saw her.
“I had nowhere else to go,” she replied, her voice trembling. “Indranil, this is too much. I can’t keep running like this.”
His expression hardened. “If you can’t handle it, then leave. This fight isn’t for the weak.”
Her breath caught. “So that’s what I am to you? Weak?”
“You’re distracting yourself with emotions, Ananya,” he said coldly. “We don’t have time for that.”
Tears blurred her vision. “I thought this was about us.”
“There is no ‘us,’” he snapped. “There never was.”
The Wounded Sparrow
The next morning, Ananya packed her things. She left the safehouse, leaving her poetry notebook behind in the chaos.
Years later, as she walked through a quiet park in another city, she thought of him. Not of his speeches or his fire, but of his silence the night he let her go.
Love had been her revolution, but for Indranil, it was merely a distraction.