Arvind Kashyap
Part 1 – The Case Begins
The rain had been coming down on Kolkata for three days straight, the kind that didn’t wash the city clean but left it sticky and smelling of wet dust, fish, and petrol. Arjun Sen sat in his office above a shuttered sweet shop on Bentinck Street, nursing his fourth cup of watery tea and wondering whether he should pawn his old Nikon camera. Once, he had been the man behind front-page scoops, the journalist who broke the stories others were too scared to touch. Now he chased cheating husbands through dimly lit lanes and clicked photos of men who slipped into cheap hotels with women they didn’t want their wives to know about. It paid the rent, sometimes, when clients didn’t vanish after getting their proofs.
The ceiling fan creaked above him, the sound almost blending with the rain against the broken glass window. He lit another cigarette and stared at the stained wall when the knock came. Three times, soft but deliberate. Arjun stubbed his cigarette, expecting another desperate housewife with a trembling voice and an envelope of advance money. Instead, the door opened to a man in a long black raincoat, his face half-hidden under a tilted umbrella. He didn’t step inside. He slid a single brown envelope onto Arjun’s desk, nodded once, and left before Arjun could even ask for a name. The footsteps faded down the narrow staircase until only the rain filled the silence.
Inside the envelope was no money, no photo, no brief. Just a single slip of paper with four words written in hurried black ink: Find the man who listens.
Arjun leaned back, reading it again, waiting for meaning to emerge. He had handled strange requests before—a missing cat that turned out to be stolen by a neighbor, a husband who suspected his wife of witchcraft because she read tarot cards—but this was different. No names, no details, just a sentence that felt like both an instruction and a warning. He thought of following the raincoat man, but the streets were already empty. Whoever he was, he hadn’t wanted to be remembered.
By midnight, curiosity had gnawed through Arjun’s fatigue. He called an old contact in the police station at Lalbazar, a sub-inspector who owed him favors from the old days. Over the crackling line, the man laughed uneasily when Arjun mentioned “the man who listens.”
“Arjun da, don’t start this again,” he said, his voice lowered. “Some things are better left in whispers. The one you’re asking about… people say he’s not even real.”
Arjun pressed. The sub-inspector went silent for a long moment, then muttered, “They call him The Listener. Doesn’t talk, doesn’t show his face. Only listens. People say he knows everything—what you said to your mistress, what you promised your boss, even what you whispered to yourself at night. Men disappear after talking too much about him. Don’t call me about this again.” Then the line went dead.
Arjun stared at the receiver. It sounded like folklore, the kind of underworld myth that taxi drivers and tea-stall regulars passed around after dusk. And yet, the fear in his contact’s voice had been genuine. He knew the tone of someone who believed what he wished he didn’t.
The next morning, Arjun walked through the wet bazaar lanes of Bowbazar, asking idle shopkeepers and hawkers if they had heard of The Listener. Most laughed, others looked away. An old cassette shop owner with cataract-clouded eyes whispered, “He hears everything, babu. That’s why you never hear him. You think this city runs on money? No. It runs on secrets. Whoever keeps them, rules.” His lips trembled as he added, “Don’t stay long here. You’ll be noticed.”
By the time Arjun returned to his office, the unease had begun to settle into his chest. He found the door slightly ajar. Inside, nothing seemed disturbed, but on his desk lay a fresh cigarette butt. He hadn’t left it there. His typewriter keys had been pressed down in random order, forming nonsense letters across the page. And yet, when he read the line, a message flickered through the noise: You’re being heard.
Arjun shut the typewriter with a bang, his palms slick with sweat. He went to the window, peering into the rain-blurred street. A tram clanged by, sparks flying off its wires, but the pavement was empty. Whoever had entered hadn’t stolen anything. They just wanted him to know they’d been there. To listen, and to remind him he was no longer alone in his silence.
That night, unable to sleep, Arjun poured himself cheap rum and replayed old memories. He remembered why he had left journalism—the botched exposé that revealed a minister’s offshore accounts. His editor had buried the story after pressure, and Arjun had refused to stay quiet. The price was his career, his name in blacklists, and his marriage, too. Riya, his daughter, had stopped speaking to him. He thought he had left the world of secrets behind. Now it seemed secrets had come looking for him.
The note still lay on his desk. Find the man who listens. It was no longer a request. It was a trap opening slowly around him, and he was already inside.
Part 2 – Whispers in the City
The city was never quiet, not even at dawn. The tram lines groaned awake, rickshaw pullers splashed through puddles, and the hawkers at Sealdah shouted over each other with the desperation of men who had to sell before the sun rose too high. Arjun walked among them, collar turned up, the note folded in his breast pocket like a stone pressing against his ribs. He told himself he was only following instinct, but the truth was simpler—he hadn’t felt this alive in years. After too many months of trailing after dull cases, here was something that tasted of danger again, and danger had always been his curse.
At a tea stall near College Street, he leaned on the damp counter and asked casually about The Listener. The chaiwala’s hands froze mid-air. He poured the tea, slid it across the counter, and shook his head without looking at him. No charge. A free cup was sometimes a gift, sometimes a warning. Arjun drank in silence, the sweet liquid scalding his throat.
By midday he had tried five more places—the tram conductors, the barbers, the pavement booksellers—and each time the air thickened when he spoke the name. People grew restless, eyes darted to the corners as if microphones hid behind the piles of second-hand books. Some laughed it off, others muttered that only fools spoke openly about such things. It was as if the city itself carried the memory of the man, like an old scar everyone refused to touch.
Finally, in a half-lit bar in Bowbazar, an informant of his agreed to talk. Chandan, a small-time tout who sold forged train tickets and had once been Arjun’s reluctant source in a smuggling story. His eyes were rimmed red from cheap alcohol, his fingers restless on the rim of his glass.
“You shouldn’t ask, dada,” Chandan whispered, leaning closer. “He’s not a man, he’s a shadow. He doesn’t kill you with a knife. He waits. He listens. Then someone else does the killing.”
Arjun frowned. “You’ve seen him?”
“No. No one sees him. Some say he’s mute, some say he’s a ghost. But everyone knows—when you feel the walls listening, when your secrets start turning against you—that means he’s close.”
Arjun pressed harder, asking names, locations. Chandan hesitated, then scribbled something on a crumpled piece of cigarette paper: a half-burned address, Chitpur tram depot. Before Arjun could question further, the man grabbed his coat and slipped away into the night.
Arjun left soon after, his mind buzzing with the clue. Chitpur depot had been shut for years, a forgotten yard where rusting trams stood like skeletal beasts. If there was any truth to the story, it made sense—a place of wires, silence, echoes. He folded the paper and walked back toward his office, the rain misting lightly now, streetlamps glistening like wet coins on the road.
But when he reached his door, he froze. A small crowd had gathered outside. The sweet shop owner below pointed upward, face pale. Arjun rushed upstairs. The door to his office hung open, splintered at the lock. Inside, the air smelled faintly of smoke. On his desk lay a single object: a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the kind he hadn’t seen since his newsroom days. Its spools turned slowly, hissing with static. Then a voice crackled through, distorted yet chillingly familiar—his own.
“Don’t stay long here. You’ll be noticed.”
Arjun’s blood ran cold. Those were the exact words the old cassette shop owner had whispered to him that morning. Recorded. Replayed. A reminder.
He snapped the machine off and scanned the room. Nothing else was touched. No money missing, no papers disturbed. Just the recording. He realized then—it wasn’t robbery. It was theatre. Whoever The Listener was, he wanted Arjun to know that nothing he said, no matter how small, was safe.
That night, Arjun barely slept. He sat by the window with his revolver on the desk, watching headlights smear across the rain-soaked streets below. Every honk, every shout, every laugh carried the paranoia of being overheard. He remembered the sub-inspector’s warning, Chandan’s trembling voice, the cigarette paper with its half-burned address. Chitpur depot loomed in his mind like a ghostly destination.
But before he could plan his next move, the phone rang, shrill against the silence. Arjun picked it up, bracing for another distorted message. Instead, it was Chandan’s sister, her voice broken with panic.
“Dada is gone. They said he slipped on the tracks near Howrah. Train crushed him. They said accident. But he was careful. Always careful.”
Arjun sat frozen, the line buzzing in his ear long after she had hung up. Chandan had spoken to him just hours ago. Now he was dead.
The words on the paper burned in Arjun’s pocket: Find the man who listens. For the first time, Arjun understood the weight of them. Whoever this Listener was, he didn’t just hear. He decided who lived and who vanished. And now Arjun’s own voice was already part of his collection.
Part 3 – The First Death
The newspapers carried only three lines: “Local tout found dead near Howrah station. Police say accident. Body identified as Chandan Das, 32.” No photos, no follow-up. Just another nameless casualty in a city that ate men alive and spat out their bones on the tracks. But Arjun knew better. He had seen Chandan the night before, hands trembling but alive, whispering the name of The Listener. Now the man was nothing but a mangled line in the metro page.
Arjun folded the paper, shoved it into the drawer, and poured himself a bitter cup of leftover tea. He thought of visiting the sister, offering condolences, but stopped himself. She would be watched, and his face near her house would be a sentence. Instead, he went back to his desk and reopened the old file boxes he had kept from his journalism days—unsolved cases, cuttings, notes scribbled in margins. He remembered a pattern he had once half-noticed: petty criminals, whistleblowers, even a small-time MLA, all dead by accidents. Train slips, heart attacks, fires. At the time, he had dismissed them as coincidences. Now, with Chandan gone, the string began to tighten into something deliberate.
He lit a cigarette and started pulling the files apart, his fingers blackened with dust. The faces stared back at him from yellowing newsprint—men and women who had once whispered, shouted, or hinted at something they shouldn’t have. And in the margins of two separate cuttings, he found the same scrawled note from his younger self: rumors of a silent man. He had chased this ghost years ago, before his career collapsed. It was as if the city had circled back, forcing him to confront the shadow he had once abandoned.
By afternoon, he set out toward Howrah, pushing through the chaos of porters and passengers, the heavy smell of coal smoke and fried food in the air. At the spot near the tracks where Chandan had supposedly slipped, he crouched low, ignoring the curious stares of passersby. The gravel showed skid marks—not the kind left by a man falling, but by shoes dragged across the ground. Blood stained the stones, already darkened by dust, but it stretched in a streak. Arjun touched the wetness, still faint under the dust. Someone had pushed Chandan, not fate.
As he straightened, a plainclothes policeman approached, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
Arjun flashed his old press card out of habit, though it was expired. “Just paying respects.”
The man grunted but didn’t press further. Still, Arjun could feel eyes tracking him as he left the station. Whoever wanted the story buried had men everywhere.
That evening, Arjun returned to the bar in Bowbazar where Chandan had last spoken. The bartender looked at him with suspicion, drying glasses with slow movements. “You were here last night. Asking questions.”
“I need answers,” Arjun replied. “Chandan gave me something. Now he’s dead.”
The bartender’s hands stilled. For a moment he said nothing, then he leaned closer, whispering, “If you want to live, stop speaking his name. Some walls are not walls. They have ears.”
Arjun left the bar more unsettled than ever. He walked through the night market, neon lights flickering across puddles, when he noticed a figure in the crowd—someone in a dark raincoat, same as the man who had first brought him the note. The figure paused by a tea stall, turned just enough for Arjun to catch the glint of eyes beneath the hood, then melted into the crowd.
Arjun followed, heart racing, weaving through vegetable carts and shouting vendors. But every time he neared, the figure slipped further ahead, like smoke in the wind. Finally, near an alley behind an abandoned cinema, he caught sight again—only to find nothing but an envelope lying on the wet ground. The figure was gone.
Inside was a photograph. Grainy, black-and-white, taken from a high angle. It showed Chandan, sitting at the bar the previous night, leaning toward Arjun. Written across the bottom in block letters: Everything you say belongs to me.
Arjun’s breath caught. Whoever had taken the photo had been inside the bar, close enough to capture the moment. He hadn’t noticed. That meant someone had been listening not just to Chandan—but to him. He tore the photo in half, but the damage was done. The Listener knew he was still digging.
Back at his office, the phone rang again. This time, it wasn’t a recorded tape. A real voice, low and steady, spoke into his ear. “You think you’re the hunter. But you are already inside the cage. Every step you take is a sound. Every sound is mine.”
Before Arjun could reply, the line went dead. He sat there in the silence, cigarette smoke curling around him, realizing that Chandan’s death was not the beginning. It was the middle of a story that had been playing out long before he stepped in. And if he wanted to survive, he would have to turn the very act of listening against the man who had made the city his microphone.
Outside, the rain began again, steady and unending, as if the sky itself was trying to drown out the whispers rising from the streets.
Part 4 – Ties to Power
The city had a way of pressing down on him when he least expected it. A tram bell would clang in the distance, or a vendor would call out in the morning fog, and Arjun would feel as if every sound carried a weight, as if someone else was storing it for later. Chandan’s death sat heavy in his chest, but what gnawed more was the phone call—low, steady, not a threat but a declaration. Every sound is mine.
He began digging the only way he knew how—old contacts, fragile networks, favors owed and grudges forgotten. In a small newsroom office near Esplanade, an old friend, Sujoy, still edited crime briefs for a dying evening paper. Over chai and cigarettes, Arjun asked, “You ever heard of someone called The Listener?”
Sujoy’s face went rigid. He glanced toward the window before answering. “Arjun, you should leave these things buried. But yes… I’ve heard whispers. Politicians call him when they want leverage. Industrialists call him when they want silence. Even cops—yes, cops—use him to bury cases. He has dirt on everyone because he doesn’t need to ask questions. He just waits. Secrets fall into his lap.”
Arjun leaned forward. “But who is he? A man? A gang?”
Sujoy shook his head, lowering his voice. “Some say he used to work in intelligence. A wiretapper during the Emergency. When the system spat him out, he took his skills underground. Others say he’s not even one man anymore. Just a network of ears, run like a business. Information traded for power.”
The words settled like ash. A man who began as a servant of the state, turned parasite, feeding on the rot of those in power—it made sense. It explained why people feared even speaking his name. If your own words could be used to destroy you, silence was survival.
By evening, Arjun made his way to Lalbazar. The sub-inspector who had once warned him owed him one last favor. They met in the back of a smoke-filled tea house, the man’s khaki shirt damp with sweat.
“You want to die, Arjun da?” the cop muttered. “Why keep poking the tiger? You think ministers don’t bow their heads to him? The Listener is a shadow stitched into the city’s veins. Even the Commissioner pretends he doesn’t exist.”
Arjun lit a cigarette. “Then he’s real.”
The cop sighed. “Real enough to decide which case gets closed before it’s opened. Real enough to know you asked me this question.”
For a moment, Arjun thought the man would bolt. But instead, he scribbled an address on a matchbox and pushed it across the table. “You didn’t get this from me. Old tram depot, Chitpur. But be careful—others have gone looking. None came back whole.”
That night, Arjun stood outside the rusting gates of Chitpur depot, the matchbox in his pocket, his nerves pulled tight. The depot loomed like a graveyard, rows of skeletal trams corroded by time, glass shattered, tracks buried in weeds. He didn’t go in. Not yet. Instead he circled the perimeter, taking in the silence. And it was silence—not even the dogs barked, not even the air carried the usual hum of the city. A silence so complete it pressed against his ears until he felt dizzy.
Something shifted behind one of the trams. A flicker of movement, too quick to place. Arjun ducked, heart pounding, but saw nothing when he looked again. Only shadows. Only silence.
Back in his office, exhaustion finally caught up. He poured himself rum and thought of Riya. His daughter hadn’t spoken to him in years, not since the night she’d called him a failure for ruining their family with his stubborn crusades. But tonight, he found himself staring at the phone, his hand hovering over the dial. He wanted to hear her voice, proof that the world outside this trap still existed. He didn’t call. Instead, he drifted into uneasy sleep on the office couch.
He woke to the sound of static. The tape recorder on his desk had switched on by itself, reels spinning slowly. He hadn’t touched it. Through the crackle came voices. First Sujoy, whispering in the newsroom. Then the cop at the tea house, muttering about ministers. Then, his own voice: Then he’s real.
The hairs on Arjun’s neck rose. Every conversation he had had in the last two days, replayed back to him, edited into a loop of proof. Proof that nothing he said, nowhere he went, was outside the Listener’s reach.
The phone rang, cutting through the static. He answered with a shaking hand. This time it was not a stranger. It was Riya. Her voice sharp, frightened. “Baba, someone’s been calling me. A man. He doesn’t speak. He just breathes. Why would someone do that?”
The line went dead before Arjun could reply. He sat frozen, the static still hissing behind him, the taste of dread sharp as metal on his tongue. The Listener had found his weakness.
Part 5 – The Daughter’s Shadow
The first time in years that Riya called him, it wasn’t out of love or forgiveness. It was out of fear. Arjun sat with the dead receiver in his hand, his heart hammering against his ribs. The Listener had been circling him like a vulture, but now the hunt had shifted. His daughter—someone who had lived outside the shadow of his ruin—was suddenly inside the game.
Arjun pulled on his coat and stepped into the night. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, a sticky film that made the neon lights of Dharmatala blur like smudged paint. He walked fast, cutting through alleys, his revolver heavy in his pocket. He hadn’t seen Riya in over three years. Last time, she had spat words at him like knives—You ruined everything, Baba. You chose your stories over us. But now, she had called, and her voice had trembled.
Her college hostel in Jadavpur stood behind rusted gates, half-hidden by banyan roots. Arjun waited outside until a sleepy guard let him through after much grumbling. Upstairs, he found her waiting in the corridor, arms crossed, eyes sharp with suspicion. She hadn’t softened.
“Why are you here?” she snapped.
“You called me.”
“I didn’t want you to come charging here like some—” She stopped, her eyes flicking to the shadows at the end of the hall. For the first time, Arjun saw it: the fear underneath her anger.
Inside her small room, books piled on the desk, posters peeling from damp walls, she told him everything in short, clipped bursts. The calls had begun a week ago. Always at night. Always silent. Just breathing on the other end. Then last night, a voice had whispered her name, slow and broken, before hanging up. She had tried ignoring it, but the unease grew until she couldn’t sleep. Tonight, when the phone rang again, she had panicked and called him.
Arjun listened, the dread tightening around his throat. This was no random harassment. This was deliberate. A message aimed at him. “Riya,” he said quietly, “you must leave this hostel for a while. Stay with a friend. Somewhere busy, somewhere public.”
She stared at him, jaw set. “What have you done? Who have you angered now?”
Arjun almost told her everything—the note, the Listener, the deaths—but stopped. She would not believe him. Worse, she might get dragged deeper. “Just trust me,” he said instead. “I’ll handle this.”
On his way out, he noticed something odd: the hostel phone booth tucked near the stairwell had its receiver dangling, swinging lightly as if just used. He touched it. Warm. Someone had called her from inside the building.
Back at his office, exhaustion tugged at him but his mind spun. The Listener’s reach wasn’t confined to political chambers or smuggler haunts. He was inside hostels, homes, telephones—everywhere. Arjun sat at his desk, scribbling lines on a yellow pad, connecting deaths, whispers, and now his daughter. A map of fear began to take shape.
At dawn, Sujoy called him, voice urgent. “Arjun, stop whatever you’re doing. I’ve just been warned—your name has come up. They say you’re digging in places where microphones sleep. Do you understand? Even the minister’s office is wired. This man… this Listener… he supplies everyone. He trades secrets like currency. You can’t fight him.”
Arjun’s laugh came bitter. “If I can’t fight him, he’ll still come for me. Better to go down swinging.”
That afternoon, he followed the matchbox clue again, standing once more before the rusting gates of Chitpur depot. This time he stepped inside. The trams stood in rows like dead animals, glass shattered, seats stripped, wires hanging like veins. His footsteps echoed too loudly, each crunch of gravel sounding like a confession.
And then he heard it—a soft click, a whirr. He froze. From inside one of the trams came the faint hum of a tape recorder spinning. He climbed aboard slowly, revolver drawn. On the wooden seat lay another reel-to-reel machine, turning without pause. A voice spilled out, one that made his blood run cold. It was Riya’s.
“Why are you here? You called me.”
Her exact words from last night, replayed in the hollow tram.
Arjun’s hands shook as he shut the machine off. This wasn’t surveillance anymore. It was theatre, staged just for him. A performance designed to remind him that every word, even those between father and daughter, belonged now to someone else.
Back in his office, he found another envelope waiting at the door. No handwriting, no signature. Inside was a photograph of Riya leaving her hostel that morning, bag slung over her shoulder, her eyes tired. The words scrawled beneath: She speaks, I hear. You speak, she pays.
Arjun crumpled the photo, fury replacing fear. The Listener had crossed a line. He could stalk, he could whisper, he could replay every word—but dragging Riya into this was war.
For the first time, Arjun knew what had to be done. He had to find the man, not the myth. The depot was only the beginning. Somewhere inside this city’s tangled veins was the chamber where the Listener sat, feeding on other people’s voices. And Arjun was going to drag him into the light, even if it meant losing everything else.
Part 6 – The Net Tightens
The rain had stopped, but Kolkata wore the scent of damp brick and mildew, a heaviness that clung to every breath. Arjun hadn’t slept. Riya’s photograph still lay crumpled on his desk, its edges damp with sweat from his palms. The message underneath echoed louder than the traffic outside—You speak, she pays. It was no longer only his life at stake. Every step forward was now a risk stamped onto her.
He needed information, more than whispers and rumors. The depot had given him nothing but theatre. So he turned to the one place where truth still hid behind locked drawers—Lalbazar’s record room.
Through an old contact, a weary constable who remembered Arjun’s better days, he slipped inside under the pretense of looking for case archives. The room smelled of dust and ink, files stacked like mausoleums. Arjun pulled records of “accidents” over the last five years: men hit by trains, electrocutions, sudden drownings, kitchen fires. He scanned pages, noting scribbled comments by investigating officers—case closed, lack of evidence, no foul play suspected. But in the margins of three reports, one faint mark repeated: a symbol, not quite a word. An ear, sketched crudely in blue ink.
Arjun’s chest tightened. These weren’t coincidences. The Listener’s shadow ran through official ink, woven into police paperwork itself. He was not outside the system; he was the system.
As he copied notes, a voice startled him. “Looking for ghosts, Sen?”
Arjun spun. Inspector Banerjee, a man with a permanent sneer, stood in the doorway. Once, years ago, Arjun had written an exposé about Banerjee’s bribery rackets. The man had never forgiven him.
“Old habits,” Arjun muttered.
Banerjee smirked. “Some habits will kill you. You think the city doesn’t know you’re sniffing around again? Even your daughter’s name is being whispered in circles she should never enter.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Do yourself a favor. Pack up and leave. This city doesn’t need another martyr with a pen.”
Arjun walked out without replying, but his stomach churned. Banerjee’s words weren’t casual. They were a warning dressed in contempt. If even a cop like him knew about Riya, the net was already closing.
That night, Arjun poured rum and spread his notes across the table. He saw the pattern clearer now—The Listener wasn’t a lone voyeur but an infrastructure. Wiretaps. Paid informants. Corrupt officials feeding him scraps in return for silence. Every death, every disappearance, wasn’t random but orchestrated. Information was his currency, fear his weapon.
The phone rang. Arjun snatched it up, expecting static. Instead, a woman’s voice came, low and urgent. “Sen, listen carefully. We don’t have long. They know you’re getting close.”
“Who is this?”
“Someone who wants him gone as much as you. A file exists. An archive. Every tape, every recording, stored in a chamber beneath Chitpur. That’s the heart of it. If you destroy it, you break his grip.”
Arjun’s pulse quickened. “Where?”
But the line cut. Only the hollow buzz remained.
He paced the room, restless. Was it bait? A trap to lure him into the depot again? Or a genuine crack in the wall of silence? He had no way of knowing. But he also had no choice.
At dawn, he visited Riya again, insisting she move to a friend’s flat in South City. She glared at him, anger masking fear. “I don’t know what storm you’ve dragged me into, Baba, but I won’t run like a coward.”
He cupped her face, something he hadn’t done since she was a child. “It’s not running. It’s surviving. Please, just trust me this once.” She turned away, but didn’t argue further. That was the most he could hope for.
Back in his office, he found the window open though he had locked it. On the desk sat another reel-to-reel, already spinning. This time, it played not words but breaths—his daughter’s, unmistakable, recorded while she slept. The Listener was no longer just warning him. He was inside her room, close enough to touch her in the dark.
Arjun’s hands shook as he yanked the plug from the wall. Fury consumed him. He couldn’t wait any longer. Chitpur wasn’t a myth. It was the lair. And somewhere beneath those rusting trams lay the heart of the city’s silence.
As he armed himself with his revolver and stuffed his notes into a satchel, he realized something he hadn’t admitted before: this wasn’t about saving himself, or even just saving Riya. This was about tearing down the cage the Listener had built around the city. For years, everyone had whispered, bowed, obeyed. He would not. If the net was tightening, he would be the one to cut the threads, even if it strangled him in the process.
The rain began again, slow, steady, as he locked the office and stepped into the night, the depot’s shadow already pulling him closer.
Part 7 – The Chase
The tram depot rose like a carcass under the cloud-choked sky, its skeletal sheds looming with rust and vines. Arjun crouched behind the iron gates, the revolver heavy in his pocket, his coat damp from the drizzle that hadn’t let go of the city in days. He told himself he was here for answers, not vengeance, but his chest burned with the memory of Riya’s sleeping breaths replayed on a tape machine. That was no longer surveillance—it was violation.
Inside, the silence was unnatural. Even the city’s usual orchestra—the dogs barking, horns blaring, drunk men shouting—stopped at the edge of this yard. Arjun stepped onto the gravel, his footsteps echoing too loud. The trams, stripped bare, their windows shattered, stood in crooked rows like blind sentinels.
From somewhere deeper, a sound—faint, metallic. A door shutting? He froze, ears straining. Then it came again: the grind of rusted hinges. He moved, slow but steady, through the wreckage. His flashlight beam swept across walls scrawled with graffiti, a pile of cables like black snakes, and then—footprints in the dust. Fresh.
He followed them to the farthest shed, where an old maintenance tunnel gaped like an open mouth. The air inside smelled of mold and electricity. Wires ran along the ceiling, some still humming faintly. As he crept down, a figure darted at the edge of his light. Tall, lean, coat flaring. The same silhouette he had chased before in Bowbazar.
“Stop!” Arjun shouted, his voice bouncing off concrete. The figure didn’t turn. Instead it sprinted deeper, boots slapping against the tunnel floor. Arjun cursed and gave chase, his breath ragged. The tunnel twisted, narrow passages branching off like veins. Twice he almost lost the shadow, but each time a flicker of movement kept him on the trail.
Then the tunnel widened into a cavernous chamber. In the center stood racks of reel-to-reel machines, their spools spinning silently, red lights blinking like watchful eyes. Microphones dangled from the ceiling, wires crawling across the floor into shadows. And standing at the far end, just beyond reach, was the figure. Coat. Hood. A face hidden in darkness.
Arjun raised his revolver. “Enough games. Who are you?”
The figure tilted its head, then lifted something in its hands. A speaker crackled to life. Arjun’s own voice spilled out, mocking him: Enough games. Who are you? The chamber filled with echoes of himself, layered, distorted, until his words became a cacophony. The figure moved back into the shadows, swallowed whole.
Arjun fired. The shot rang out, but when the smoke cleared, there was nothing—only tape reels spinning faster, spitting out voices. Sujoy. The cop at the tea house. Riya. All tangled together, all speaking at once.
He staggered, hands to his ears. This wasn’t just surveillance—it was psychological warfare. He stumbled back into the tunnel, the laughter of his own distorted voice chasing him. Behind him, footsteps followed, steady, deliberate.
By the time he burst into the open yard, rain slapping his face, the figure was gone again. Only the silence remained.
Arjun leaned against a rusting tram, lungs heaving. He had seen enough to know the truth: The Listener wasn’t a man in a room with a single machine. He was a network, a system of ears and wires and men who obeyed. And someone, maybe the figure in the coat, was the keeper of that system.
As he staggered out of the depot, headlights flashed. A black Ambassador screeched to a halt. Two men jumped out, faces hard, hands already reaching for him. Arjun ran. His legs screamed, but adrenaline pushed him forward. Through alleys, over puddles, past shuttered shops. Bullets cracked the air behind him, sparks jumping from a lamppost.
He turned into Burrabazar, the maze of narrow lanes alive even at midnight with the smell of spice and sweat. He ducked into a shop’s backdoor, weaving through stacked sacks of rice, emerging into another lane. The men chased, but the market swallowed him. Finally, gasping, soaked, he collapsed against a wall in a deserted gully.
For a long time he sat there, listening to the rain drip from tin roofs. He had barely escaped. But in that breathless silence, a realization came—he wasn’t running toward truth anymore. He was being herded. Driven like prey into tighter corners.
The Listener wasn’t chasing him to kill him. Not yet. He was shaping the hunt, forcing Arjun to hear his own helplessness echo back.
When he finally reached his office at dawn, another tape machine sat on his desk, already spinning. He didn’t touch it. He already knew what it would say: the sound of his footsteps in the tunnel, his own voice screaming Stop!, and the crack of his revolver. Proof that every step of the chase had already been captured.
Part 8 – Into the Lair
The city woke with its usual roar—tram bells clanging, buses coughing black smoke, hawkers shouting over each other—but for Arjun, the noise carried a different weight now. Every sound felt owned, captured, catalogued. He moved through the morning like a ghost, mind replaying the chase through the depot tunnels, the figure who had mocked him with his own voice. The Listener wasn’t just a man hiding in shadows. He was something bigger, an entire machine built out of wires and fear.
Sujoy called again that afternoon, his tone cracked with panic. “Arjun, stop. You don’t understand. Even your phone isn’t yours anymore. They’re letting you live because they enjoy watching you squirm. If you push further, you’ll vanish like the others.”
“Then help me,” Arjun snapped. “Where does it end? Who runs it?”
Sujoy’s silence stretched too long. Then a whisper: “The chamber under Chitpur. That’s where the archive lies. But you won’t come back.” The line went dead before Arjun could reply.
That night, Arjun returned to the depot. This time he came prepared—flashlight, revolver, and a steel crowbar. The rain had stopped, leaving the yard drenched and glistening under a wan moon. The trams stood silent, skeletal, the air thick with the smell of rust. He slipped back into the maintenance tunnel, retracing his steps to the chamber of tapes.
The hum began before he reached it. Low, steady, almost like breathing. When he entered, the sight froze him. Rows of reel-to-reel machines, hundreds of them, stacked like library shelves. Their spools turned slowly, feeding ribbons of magnetic tape into labeled boxes. On each box, a name. Politicians. Police. Journalists. Ordinary men and women. He saw his own name scrawled on one. Next to it, Riya’s.
His breath caught. He reached out, fingers trembling, and pulled the box free. Inside, dozens of tapes, each marked with dates. He slid one into a machine. Static hissed, then her voice filled the chamber—Riya laughing with a friend, her casual chatter in the hostel corridor. Another tape: her phone call to him the night she had sounded afraid. Another: her sleeping breaths.
Rage surged through him. This was no longer intelligence work. It was obsession. Someone had stripped his daughter’s privacy bare, turned her life into reels of sound. He smashed the tape machine with his crowbar, the reels shattering across the floor. The chamber trembled with the noise, but before the echo faded, another machine clicked on by itself. His own voice spilled out, distorted and mocking: You think breaking a few toys will silence me?
Arjun spun, revolver raised. The hooded figure stood at the far end of the chamber, half-lit by a dangling bulb. This time, he didn’t retreat. He stepped closer, slow, deliberate. The hood fell back, revealing a face pale and scarred, lips stitched in silence by old wounds. The man’s eyes gleamed with something cold, unreadable.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he lifted a small recorder, pressed play, and a voice filled the air. Arjun’s own voice. Who are you? Then, over it, the man’s reply—spoken years ago, captured forever—I am the one who listens.
Arjun’s stomach dropped. The man was mute, his voice gone, but he had preserved fragments of himself in recordings, stitched his identity out of stolen sounds. A man who could not speak had built an empire by making every other voice his own.
The figure set the recorder down, then gestured around the chamber. Hundreds of reels spun faster, releasing a storm of voices—shouts, whispers, sobs—layered into a deafening wall of sound. Arjun staggered back, hands clamped over his ears. The man’s eyes never left him, calm, almost tender, as if inviting him to drown in the noise.
Through the chaos, Arjun raised his revolver and fired. The bullet tore into the shelves, reels exploding in sparks and shreds of tape. The chamber erupted in a scream of feedback, machines shorting out one by one. The man vanished into the shadows, but the damage was done—the lair was bleeding sound.
Arjun stumbled toward the exit, choking on smoke and dust. Behind him, the machines sputtered, voices cutting in and out, fragments of lives dissolving into static. He knew he hadn’t destroyed it all. The archive was too vast, too deeply rooted. But for the first time, he had torn a hole in the Listener’s silence.
When he emerged into the night, the depot lay still under the moon. But he knew he wasn’t free. The Listener had seen his face, heard his breath, claimed his voice. This was not an ending. It was only the beginning of war.
And somewhere, in the shadows of the city, the man without a voice would already be preparing his reply.
Part 9 – The Face Behind the Silence
The morning after the depot raid, the city felt altered. Not quieter, but heavier, as if every tram bell, every street cry, carried an echo that belonged to someone else. Arjun sat in his office, his revolver dismantled on the table, the barrel cleaned with trembling hands. He had destroyed shelves of reels, smashed machines, but he knew it wasn’t victory. The Listener was still out there, and now Arjun had made himself visible—an enemy worth silencing.
The phone rang. He flinched, then answered. Static. Then, slowly, a voice emerged—not distorted, not his own, but deep and raw, filled with strain. “You broke my house.” A pause, ragged breathing. “But you cannot break me.” Then silence.
Arjun gripped the receiver until his knuckles turned white. For the first time, he had heard him—not a stolen voice, not a loop, but the Listener himself. Damaged, guttural, but real. Which meant the man was still close, and angry.
By evening, Arjun’s contacts dried up. The constable who had helped him with files disappeared. Sujoy stopped answering calls. Even the chai stall where he usually lingered fell silent when he appeared. Fear spread like smoke—people knew he was marked, and no one wanted to inhale the same air.
That night, Riya called again. This time, she was furious. “Baba, two men followed me after class. Do you understand? They stood outside the gate, waiting. What have you dragged me into?”
Arjun closed his eyes. “Pack a bag. Leave now. I’ll come for you.”
“No,” she snapped. “Tell me the truth first. Who is he?”
Arjun hesitated, then spoke the words aloud for the first time. “The Listener. A man who makes the city his microphone. He has everyone’s secrets. Now he wants mine. And yours.”
Silence. Then her voice, softer: “If he hears everything… he’s listening to this right now.” The line went dead before Arjun could reply.
The thought gnawed at him. Every confession, every warning, was just another gift to the Listener. If he couldn’t speak, maybe he had to act.
The next evening, a note appeared under his door, written in block letters: If you want her alive, come alone. Old river warehouse. Midnight.
Arjun went. The warehouse crouched by the Hooghly, its walls damp, its windows shattered into jagged teeth. Inside, the smell of rust and brine filled the air. And in the middle of the vast hall, under a single hanging bulb, stood the man. Coat gone, hood lowered. His scarred face caught the light—pale skin twisted by burn marks, lips mangled, fused into a permanent silence. His eyes glittered like shards of glass.
On a crate beside him sat a recorder. He pressed play. Riya’s voice filled the hall, recorded only hours ago, shaky with fear: Two men followed me after class… Arjun’s stomach lurched. He raised his revolver. “Where is she?”
The man tilted his head, then gestured to the shadows. Two figures dragged Riya forward, blindfolded, hands tied. She stumbled, her muffled cries slicing through Arjun’s chest. He aimed the revolver, but the Listener lifted one hand—wait. Then he pressed another button on the recorder. Arjun’s own voice spilled out: Pack a bag. Leave now. I’ll come for you.
The meaning was clear. Every promise Arjun made was already owned, twisted into a leash. The Listener didn’t need to kill. He only needed to prove he was everywhere.
Arjun’s finger tightened on the trigger. The Listener didn’t flinch. His eyes never left Arjun’s, calm, unblinking. Then, slowly, he lifted a battered tape reel from the crate, labeled with one word: Sen. He held it out, almost like an offering.
Arjun’s breath caught. His entire life, captured on tape. Every failure, every confession, every whispered fear. If he pulled the trigger, maybe Riya would die. If he didn’t, everything he was would belong to this man forever.
The warehouse seemed to hold its breath. Rain lashed against broken windows, the river groaned outside. The Listener stood silent, scarred lips pressed tight, waiting. For Arjun’s voice. For his choice.
Part 10 – Silence or Truth
The river beat its slow rhythm against the warehouse walls, and the rain seeped through broken panes, dripping in steady notes onto the concrete floor. Arjun’s revolver was raised, his breath shallow, his heart torn between the daughter kneeling in blindfolded fear and the scarred man who stood silent, holding out the reel of tape. The Listener’s eyes shone with something unreadable—mockery, perhaps pity, perhaps the certainty of victory.
Riya’s muffled cry sliced through the moment. Arjun’s hand shook. This was the choice the city had whispered about for years: silence, or truth. He could shoot, end it, and risk his daughter’s life swallowed by the shadows. Or he could take the tape, accept the Listener’s rule, and live forever under a leash made of his own voice.
“Let her go,” Arjun demanded, his voice cracking. It echoed in the hall, too loud, too vulnerable. He knew even that sentence would be catalogued, twisted, replayed. The Listener tilted his head, then pressed play on the recorder. Arjun’s own plea filled the air again: Let her go. Let her go. Let her go. The repetition turned his desperation into humiliation.
The men holding Riya shifted, knives glinting under the dim bulb. Arjun closed his eyes for a heartbeat. He thought of his newsroom days, when he had once believed words could tear down empires. He thought of the night his career collapsed, when silence was forced onto his story. And he thought of Riya, small in his arms once, asking him to promise that monsters weren’t real.
He opened his eyes. “No more silence,” he whispered. Then louder: “No more.”
He fired. The shot cracked through the warehouse, echoing like thunder over the river. One of the men holding Riya fell, blood blooming across his chest. Chaos erupted. The second man lunged, dragging her back into the shadows. Arjun fired again—missed—then charged, tackling him to the ground. They struggled, fists and steel flashing. Arjun smashed his revolver across the man’s skull, leaving him limp.
When he looked up, the Listener was gone. The reel of tape lay on the crate, spinning slowly, its loose ribbon spilling across the floor like entrails. Riya tore off her blindfold, gasping, her eyes wide with shock. “Baba—” she began, but the words stuck.
Arjun grabbed her hand. “We don’t have time.” Together they stumbled out into the rain.
But as they reached the street, a sound followed—a crackle, then voices, bleeding from loudspeakers hidden somewhere in the dark. Not just his, not just hers, but thousands of voices. Shouts, confessions, weeping, laughter. The Listener’s archive wasn’t destroyed. It was alive, woven through the city’s bones.
Riya clutched his arm. “He’s everywhere.”
Arjun stared at the black sky. “Then we burn everything.”
The next weeks were a blur. They hid in shifting corners of the city, hunted, waiting. Arjun passed files to what few honest journalists remained, smuggled recordings to student groups, whispered truths into ears that still dared to listen. And slowly, the city stirred. Headlines appeared. A minister resigned. A businessman fled abroad. Fear cracked, just a little.
But every night, Arjun knew the Listener was still out there. In some basement, some tunnel, some silent chamber, the scarred man was rebuilding, stitching new tapes out of new voices. Silence could not be killed. It only shifted shapes.
One evening, Arjun and Riya sat on the balcony of a safehouse, the city glowing with monsoon lights below. She asked, “Did we win?”
Arjun lit a cigarette, the smoke curling into the wet air. He thought of the reel labeled with his name, of the scarred lips pressed tight in mute defiance. He exhaled. “No. We survived.”
Far away, somewhere in the night, a tape reel clicked on. A breath filled the silence, steady and patient. Listening.
