Maya Sharma
Part 1: The Last Rally in Pink
The rain had stopped just minutes before the rally began. A pink haze lingered over the Kolkata skyline, smeared with leftover monsoon clouds and political slogans painted hastily across aging walls. Shanti Ghosh, dressed in her signature pink Banarasi saree with gold-threaded lotus motifs, stood on the makeshift bamboo stage at the heart of Ward 34. Her voice, usually mellow and diplomatic, now sliced through the damp air like a blade. “We are not just mothers and wives,” she said, her voice echoing across the crowd, “we are builders, protectors, and visionaries. And we will no longer be silenced.”
The women clapped louder than the men. Many had brought their daughters. Pink flags fluttered beside red ones—her own touch, meant to signal something beyond party lines. Hope, maybe. Change, certainly. As she descended the stage, waving, smiling that guarded smile, the cameras clicked. It would be the last photo ever taken of her alive. By morning, she would be found dead—wrapped not in pink, but in a crumpled black cotton saree, her body dumped like a broken symbol atop a derelict three-storey building near Maniktala.
Ritika Sen knew something was wrong the moment her editor forwarded the news alert at 6:13 AM. “Shanti Ghosh found dead. Suspected murder. Police confirm identity.” It was a short sentence, devoid of drama, but something about it made Ritika’s fingertips tremble. The photograph attached showed the police covering the body with a blue sheet, but beneath it, the corner of a black pallu peeked through. Black? Ritika knew Shanti had worn pink yesterday. She had covered the rally herself, tweeted a picture of the councillor, even quoted one of her lines. “Why the saree switch?” she mumbled.
Ritika reached the crime scene by 7:02 AM. The building was a ruin, one of those half-eaten colonial structures with moss-covered balconies and hollow-eyed windows. A handful of constables stood around, half-asleep, occasionally waving off the morning walkers who had gathered, their umbrellas still dripping. ACP Samar Roy arrived shortly after, tall and tired, his face unreadable. “Who called it in?” Ritika asked. “A tea vendor. Said he saw pigeons acting weird. Came up and found her.” Samar didn’t look at her as he spoke. He was already climbing the stairs.
Shanti’s body lay as if dropped from a careless height—one arm bent under her back, one sandal missing. The black cotton saree was old, frayed at the edge. No jewellery. No purse. Just a faint trace of marigold scent that clung to her hair. Samar stared at the scene silently before glancing over at his junior. “Any sign of struggle?” he asked. The constable shook his head. “No visible wounds. No blood. Just bruising near the throat.” Ritika stood outside the police perimeter, notebook open, though she wasn’t writing. Her mind played back yesterday’s rally, her own photos of Shanti. That saree had shimmered in the sunlight. It wasn’t something easily missed or discarded.
“ACP Roy,” she called out, as he descended, “was she wearing the same clothes she was last seen in?” Roy paused on the stair. “What difference does that make?” “Pink to black,” Ritika said quietly. “That’s not a random detail. That’s a message.” He didn’t respond. But his eyes lingered on her longer than necessary before he walked away.
Back in her newsroom cubicle, Ritika zoomed into the photo from the rally. Pink silk, gold border, a lotus brooch pinned at the pallu. Then she opened the crime scene stills from her own camera—no brooch. No shimmer. Just a dead body in a dead saree. She flipped back and forth between the images like they were puzzle pieces. What had changed between the stage and the rooftop? Who had seen Shanti in the intervening hours? Her call log from the day would reveal some of it, Ritika thought. But getting that meant getting past both bureaucracy and silence.
By noon, the news channels were buzzing. Woman Leader Found Dead scrolls ran beneath every anchor’s face. Political rivals offered condolences. The Mayor issued a vague statement about “unrest and urgency.” But none mentioned the saree. None even asked. Ritika called Shanti’s personal assistant, Jaya. She didn’t pick up. Then she tried Anuradha Ghosh—Shanti’s estranged sister. After four rings, a low voice answered.
“She’s gone,” Anuradha said flatly.
“I’m sorry,” Ritika said. “But I need to ask—did Shanti keep any sarees in your house? Old ones, cotton ones?” Silence. Then a sigh. “Yes. A trunk full. Some from our mother. Some she never wore in public. Black ones. She never wore black outside. Said it reminded her of our father’s funeral.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t carry a black saree to the rally?”
“No,” Anuradha said. “She wore the pink one. She told me that morning—‘Let them see strength in softness today.’ She meant the saree.”
Ritika wrote down the sentence. Her chest tightened. Someone had deliberately stripped Shanti of her public image and redressed her in private grief. That wasn’t just murder. That was narrative control.
By evening, ACP Roy stood in front of flashing cameras. “We are treating the case as a homicide. We request the public not to speculate and allow the investigation to proceed.” But Ritika had already begun to speculate. Because the person who changed Shanti’s saree had touched her post-death—or worse, had prepared her like a doll, before the final breath. And whoever it was wanted the world to forget who Shanti was in pink. Wanted to rewrite her ending.
But Ritika wouldn’t let that happen.
Not yet.
Part 2: The Brooch That Disappeared
The newsroom smelled like overbrewed coffee and damp paper. Ritika sat cross-legged on her chair, eyes flicking between photographs—side-by-side comparisons of Shanti’s rally outfit and the one in which she was found. The brooch, a golden lotus that had glinted on her pallu, was missing. Ritika zoomed into the rally frame once more. The pin wasn’t just decorative—it was symbolic. Shanti always wore a lotus when she wanted to make a statement. “Let them see strength in softness.” Her sister’s words echoed louder now. Ritika pulled up older photos from past rallies, past interviews, public hearings—every time the stakes were high, the lotus gleamed on her.
The question gnawed at her: where was the brooch?
A knock interrupted her thoughts. “Sen, ACP Roy wants to see you. Now,” said Mehta, the city desk editor, not bothering to look up from his phone. Ritika grabbed her bag and ran.
Police headquarters felt colder than usual. The reception guard didn’t even flinch as she signed in. Upstairs, Roy was pacing. “You don’t listen, do you?” he asked without turning. “Depends on what I’m being told,” Ritika replied. “You said not to speculate. I didn’t. I investigated.” Roy threw a printed photo on the desk. It was from CCTV—Shanti entering a grey sedan outside the rally, timestamped 7:43 PM. “She left alone,” he said. “And the car belongs to Rohit Dutta.”
Ritika blinked. “The party spokesperson?”
Roy nodded. “And her ex-lover.”
“I thought they weren’t speaking,” Ritika said.
“They weren’t,” Roy replied. “At least not publicly.”
Ritika leaned closer. “So he picked her up? And then?” Roy sat down. “He says he dropped her at her sister’s place. But Anuradha says she never came.” A pause. “You see the gap forming?”
She did. A time gap. A trust gap. A murder gap.
“Did you find the pink saree?” she asked. “Or the brooch?”
Roy’s jaw clenched. “No.”
Which meant it was taken. Hidden. Or kept. And that meant the killer wanted to erase one version of Shanti and project another. The woman in pink had to be replaced by the woman in black.
Ritika left the office with a chill crawling under her skin. She called Jaya again. Still no answer. Then she tried Rohit Dutta’s number, unsure what she’d even ask if he picked up. It went straight to voicemail. She left none.
At dusk, she returned to the site of the rally. The stage had been dismantled, pink flags fluttering like ghosts on bamboo poles. The chai stall nearby was open. She remembered the old man who ran it—he had been there yesterday, handing out plastic cups while Shanti’s voice boomed overhead.
“Uncle, remember me?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. “You were the girl with the phone. Press?”
“Yes. Did you see what happened after the rally ended?”
“She stood near that car,” he said, pointing at the corner. “A grey one. She was talking to a man, arguing.”
“What did he look like?”
“Light beard. White shirt. Gold ring on his right hand. He kept pointing at her. She looked… tired.”
“Did she get in?”
“She did,” he said. “But not happy. Like she was forced to.”
“Did anyone else come after?”
He hesitated. “A woman. Ten minutes later. Short hair. In black. She kept staring at the car’s taillights.” Ritika’s heart skipped. “You don’t know who she was?” He shook his head. “But she wasn’t from the crowd.”
The black saree. The brooch. The unknown woman. Things were beginning to fracture.
That night, Ritika sifted through social media posts with a feverish energy. She found her own rally video. She noticed Shanti had clutched the brooch once during a pause. A subconscious gesture. Was she nervous? Then came another frame—blurry but crucial. A woman in black standing behind a tree, far from the crowd, staring at the stage.
She wore dark glasses.
Ritika enhanced the frame, the pixels distorting, but something about the stance felt familiar. She dug deeper—party photos, media archives, even protest footage. Then she found it. A woman in black at a 2021 protest, arguing with Shanti in front of police barricades. Caption: “Radhika Mondal, expelled from Women’s Cell after confrontation.”
Ritika’s fingers flew. She searched for more.
Radhika Mondal. Former ally. Once mentored by Shanti. Expelled after internal politics and an alleged fund misuse accusation. But it was buried. No media coverage beyond that one photo. Ritika called Roy. “There’s someone you need to look into. Radhika Mondal. She might be your missing shadow.”
There was silence. “How do you know this?”
“She was there. At the rally. In black. Watching. And she hated Shanti.”
Roy didn’t answer for a while. “We’ll check it out.”
“Check fast,” Ritika said. “Because this wasn’t just a killing. It was a costume change. And someone’s dressing the truth as a lie.”
When she hung up, Ritika looked again at the photo of Shanti onstage, bathed in pink. A fire in her eyes. A lotus at her heart.
And somewhere, that brooch still gleamed in the dark.
Part 3: The Woman in the Shadows
Ritika didn’t sleep. The edges of her thoughts kept curling like the ends of a burnt photograph. By morning, she had assembled a rough timeline. 7:43 PM: Shanti enters Rohit Dutta’s car. 7:53 PM: a woman in black, possibly Radhika Mondal, arrives at the rally spot after most people had left. Somewhere between then and the early morning discovery of the body, the pink saree had vanished, and a political icon was reduced to a lifeless outline in a different fabric. Ritika stared at her whiteboard, now covered in sticky notes, pins, and arrows. The black saree wasn’t just clothing—it was narrative rewriting. And whoever did it knew symbolism.
She reached the police headquarters before 9 AM. The receptionist gave her a bored look but didn’t stop her. ACP Roy was in the conference room, staring at a crime scene board with a half-eaten samosa in hand. “You’re early,” he said. “You’re too calm,” Ritika replied. “Did you find her?” “Radhika Mondal?” He nodded. “Not yet. She left her last known address a year ago. We found a bank account but it’s been inactive. No social handles. No digital breadcrumbs.”
Ritika frowned. “She’s either hiding… or being hidden.”
Roy put down the samosa. “You journalists always look for drama.” “And you cops often miss the story,” she snapped back. “This isn’t a random murder. This is erasure. Shanti Ghosh was being reinvented even before her body went cold.”
Roy sighed. “You want to help? Fine. Track the brooch. Track the saree. We’ve alerted textile merchants and second-hand dealers. It’s a long shot, but maybe—”
“I don’t need a dealer,” Ritika interrupted. “I need the woman who knew what that saree represented.”
She walked out before he could stop her.
Back in her flat, Ritika dug through old interviews with Shanti. One stood out—a 2019 podcast titled “Power in Threads.” Shanti spoke about the pink saree: “It belonged to my mother. She wore it when she went to court to fight for our land. I wear it when I fight.” The words hit Ritika like a slap. This wasn’t just a rally outfit—it was a legacy. Someone had wanted to remove that legacy, rewrite it in black, as if stripping Shanti of her identity would make her easier to bury.
She called Anuradha again.
“Yes?” the voice was colder now.
“Did you see the brooch?”
“No,” Anuradha replied. “It wasn’t on the body.”
“Do you know where she kept it?”
Anuradha hesitated. “It was pinned to the pink saree. She didn’t remove it unless necessary.”
“Would she ever give it to anyone?”
“No. Never.”
Ritika closed her eyes. “Then someone removed it. Deliberately. And maybe they kept it.”
That evening, she went to the Pink Lotus Centre—a women’s shelter Shanti had helped build. The director, Mita Sen, remembered her. “She used to say pink was not weakness. It was revolution in disguise,” Mita said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Did Radhika Mondal ever visit here?” Ritika asked.
Mita stiffened. “Why?”
“Because she was at the rally. And I think she’s connected.”
Mita nodded slowly. “Radhika was here once. Two years ago. After the fund scandal, she came asking for a second chance. Shanti refused.”
“Why?”
“She said some mistakes can’t be forgiven when you’re carrying others’ hopes.”
“Did Radhika threaten her?”
“No words. Just a look.”
That night, Ritika received an envelope. No return address. No stamp. Just her name scrawled in sharp black ink. Inside, a polaroid photo: Shanti, in her pink saree, smiling, sitting in what looked like a small office. On her chest, the golden lotus brooch gleamed. Behind her, in the mirror’s faint reflection, stood a blurry woman in black, holding a phone.
There was a second photo. This one recent. A dusty, cracked table. A brooch placed on it.
And a note:
“Stories can be stolen. Will you let hers be?”
Ritika’s breath caught. The brooch still existed. Someone had it. And they wanted her to find it.
She turned the envelope over. No fingerprint, no scent, no visible clue. But the photo—the mirror—maybe that was it. She pulled it under a lamp, zoomed in. The wall had peeling yellow paint. A torn campaign poster. “Vote for Ghosh.” But it wasn’t recent. The poster design was from five years ago.
Old office?
Abandoned campaign headquarters?
She called Roy again. “I need access to the old ward office she used during her first election. The one on Vivekananda Street.”
“That place is sealed,” he said. “It’s condemned.”
“Then break the seal,” she said. “Because the killer’s not erasing her from the present. They’re cutting her out from the past.”
Roy met her there an hour later. The building was dark, the windows shattered, vines curling into the balcony like forgotten veins. Inside, dust coated every surface. But Ritika walked straight to the back room—the one with the mirror still hanging, cracked on the left side.
“This is the room,” she whispered.
They found footprints in the dust. New ones. A single chair. A packet of incense.
And in the drawer, under faded flyers, was a small cloth pouch.
Inside it, the golden lotus brooch.
And a note on a torn envelope:
“Truth doesn’t die. It just changes sarees.”
Roy read the line aloud. “Poetic.”
“No,” Ritika said, her voice sharp. “It’s a warning.”
Because someone was still rewriting Shanti Ghosh.
And this was only Act One.
Part 4: The Missing Pages of a Life
The brooch sat on Ritika’s desk like a relic from a vanished world. She didn’t touch it—just stared. Its gold petals caught the overhead light like it was still alive, still glowing with the defiant elegance of the woman who wore it. Across town, ACP Roy was preparing a report with the findings from the old campaign office, but Ritika wasn’t waiting. She knew the moment she’d seen the brooch that this story was much bigger than a murder. Someone was reauthoring Shanti’s life, page by page, like a redacted manuscript. And the next chapter was missing.
Her next call was to the city archives, where official campaign records were stored. “Shanti Ghosh, Ward 34, all documents from 2016 to 2023,” she told the tired clerk. He raised a brow. “Why the entire timeline?” “Because I think someone else wants to erase it,” she replied. After three hours of dust, sweat, and bureaucracy, she held a box of files—volunteer lists, donation ledgers, rally permits. In one of them, a name popped up: Radhika Mondal – Outreach Coordinator, 2019.
That’s how close she had been. Trusted. Embedded.
But there was more. In a donor list from 2020, one entry was circled in red ink. Arundhati Welfare Trust – ₹2,00,000. Ritika hadn’t heard of it. She searched her notes. The same trust had come up in a news story about fund misuse two years ago. The whistleblower? Shanti Ghosh. The accused? Radhika Mondal. That was the real break. It wasn’t just betrayal. It was exposure. And maybe, revenge.
She rushed back to her flat and scoured her old audio interviews with Shanti. One clip stood out—never aired, just a scratch track. “I always believed in Radhika,” Shanti had said. “But sometimes… belief is the most dangerous weapon. When it’s placed in the wrong hands.”
That evening, a brown envelope appeared at the Pink Lotus Centre. This time, it wasn’t anonymous. The sender was marked clearly: Saraswati Library, Bhawanipur. Inside was a journal. Handwritten, jagged script. Not Shanti’s. The name signed at the bottom of the first page: Radhika Mondal.
Ritika held it like it might bleed. Every page was thick with underlined sentences, angry confessions, and strange aphorisms:
“She wore pink like it made her holy. But holy things are meant to burn.”
“I was never her shadow. I was the mirror.”
“If they remember her in pink, they’ll forget what she did in black.”
The last line was almost prophetic. Ritika flipped to the final page. One date. One sentence. August 19th – She dies tonight, in black.
August 19th. The night of the rally. The night Shanti disappeared. The night the saree changed.
Ritika brought the diary straight to ACP Roy. He read in silence, then looked up. “We have motive. We have premeditation. We just don’t have her.”
“She’s not hiding,” Ritika said. “She’s watching.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she keeps sending me things. First the photo. Then the brooch. Now the diary. She wants the story told—her way.”
Roy frowned. “She’s baiting you.”
“I know,” Ritika said. “But the only way to catch a storyteller is to follow the plot.”
They sent the diary for fingerprint analysis. Meanwhile, Ritika traced the Saraswati Library address. It was real—an old, crumbling building with more termites than titles. The librarian, a hunched man in thick glasses, barely looked up. “Yes, Radhika used to come. Wrote often. Sat in the back, near the Bengali fiction section.”
“Did she leave anything here?” Ritika asked.
He opened a drawer without asking for ID. “A key,” he said. “She told me if someone came looking, I should hand it over.” It was small, rusted, tied with red thread. “What’s it for?”
“She didn’t say. Just that only the girl with questions would ask.”
Ritika felt her throat go dry. The key had an engraving: V-34. Ward 34’s oldest community storage facility—the same building where Shanti had held her first victory meeting seven years ago.
Roy went with her this time. The storage unit was behind a rusted gate, half-swallowed by creepers and years of municipal neglect. Inside, it smelled of paper and rot. Dozens of trunks lined the walls. The key fit one near the back. She opened it slowly.
Inside: a folded pink saree, carefully preserved.
A photo of Shanti, blood at the corner of her mouth.
And a third envelope, addressed to Ritika Sen.
She opened it with trembling hands. The letter was handwritten.
“You think I killed her. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. But I took what was mine. I gave her identity. I built her myth. And then she tried to destroy mine. I couldn’t let that happen. She wore pink like a throne. I gave her black as a grave.”
No signature. But it didn’t need one.
Ritika stood silently, the pink fabric soft in her hands. Roy said nothing for a long time.
“She left a trail for you.”
“She wanted her side known,” Ritika whispered. “Even if it’s monstrous.”
Roy took the letter, sealed it in an evidence bag. “We’ll find her now.”
But Ritika wasn’t sure anymore who “her” really was.
Because every missing page was turning up in her hands—written by the woman in the shadows.
And Ritika wasn’t just telling the story anymore.
She was in it.
Part 5: Black Threads and Bloodlines
The pink saree lay across Ritika’s bed like a confession. Soft silk, gently folded, unwashed—still carrying the scent of marigold and something metallic beneath. She hadn’t told Roy she brought it home. She told herself it was for safekeeping, but the truth was more complicated. It felt like holding onto the last real piece of Shanti Ghosh—before politics, before the lies, before the woman in black rewrote her end. Ritika stayed up that night reading Radhika’s journal again. She scribbled notes in the margins, tracked the mood swings, mapped the obsession. There were mentions of childhood, abandonment, rage buried like seeds in dry soil. And then a name appeared, more than once—Meera. It was never explained, but Ritika sensed importance in the way Radhika wrote it: “Meera never knew. Meera never asked. Meera inherited a legacy she never earned.”
Meera who?
The next morning, Ritika went through the Ghosh family tree published during Shanti’s mayoral campaign bid—siblings, parents, cousins. No Meera. Then she searched electoral affidavits. Then alumni records from Presidency College. And there she was. Meera Ghosh. Same surname. Enrolled 2002. Same department. Political science. Graduated 2005. Not a sister—too young. Not a cousin—wrong region. Ritika dug deeper and found something unexpected. Meera Ghosh had changed her name legally in 2012. To Radhika Mondal.
Ritika froze.
Radhika wasn’t just a colleague or a rival.
She was blood.
She was Shanti’s illegitimate half-sister.
The next hour blurred in a rush of calls and frantic note-taking. At police HQ, Ritika slammed the documents on Roy’s desk. “She’s her sister. Hidden. Unacknowledged. Possibly denied.” Roy scanned the papers. “This changes everything,” he muttered. “You think it was revenge?” “I think it was reclamation,” Ritika said. “Radhika didn’t just want to destroy Shanti. She wanted to wear her. Replace her. The brooch, the diary, the letters—this was her version of inheritance.”
Roy nodded grimly. “Let me brief the commissioner. If there’s family involved, we’ll need a cleaner warrant trail.”
Ritika didn’t wait. She went to Shanti’s childhood home in Salt Lake, a two-story red-brick bungalow now half-swallowed by bougainvillea. Anuradha answered the door with puffy eyes and a stiff sari. “What now?” she said. Ritika held up the photos, the diary, and the name change document. “I need to know the truth. Who was Meera?”
Anuradha stared at the papers and slowly sat down on the porch. “Shanti’s father had another woman. A younger one. A domestic worker from the village. They had a child—Meera. She was never publicly acknowledged. But Shanti knew. She paid for her school. Secretly. But she didn’t want her near politics.”
“Why not?”
“Because Meera was… angry. Always felt like the world owed her. When she came back as Radhika, joined the campaign, Shanti didn’t know at first. By the time she did, it was too late. The party wouldn’t survive a scandal. So she expelled her quietly, blamed the funds.”
“She protected the name, not the person,” Ritika said.
Anuradha looked away. “Sometimes, you have to choose the cause over the wound.”
But Radhika hadn’t forgotten. Or forgiven.
That night, Ritika got another envelope. Hand-delivered. No postmark. Inside was a strand of pink silk thread, and a phone number. Just ten digits. No name. No message.
She stared at it for an hour before calling.
The voice on the other end was calm. Familiar.
“I thought you’d take longer,” Radhika said.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m finishing what she started. She built a lie. I’m just undoing it.”
“You murdered her.”
“No,” Radhika said. “I revealed her. And now I’ve revealed myself. Two sides of the same thread.”
“I have the diary. The letter. The saree.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. I want to meet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the last honest narrator left.”
Ritika gripped the phone tighter. “Where?”
There was silence. Then coordinates.
“Come alone. Don’t bring the brooch. Or the police.”
The line went dead.
Ritika stared at the screen. The coordinates were near the old river dock, where ferries barely ran now. It was desolate, forgotten—perfect for someone who’d spent years in the shadows.
She didn’t tell Roy. Not yet.
She packed a voice recorder, pepper spray, and a notebook.
As she walked out, the pink saree fluttered from the chair. A whisper of what once was.
But Ritika wasn’t chasing ghosts anymore.
She was about to face the living shadow.
And this time, the page wouldn’t be rewritten without a fight.
Part 6: Meeting at the River’s Edge
The sun had dipped behind the Howrah skyline by the time Ritika reached the old river dock. Once a bustling hub of ferrymen and vendors, the place now breathed in sighs—wind through rusted boat chains, the occasional clink of metal on concrete, the distant cry of a stray dog. A single streetlight flickered near the end of the pier, casting pale halos on the mossy steps that led down to the water. Ritika clutched her recorder in one pocket, her notebook in another. Her shoes clicked against the wet stone, echoing louder than she liked.
She didn’t see Radhika at first. Only the silhouette of a woman, seated on the edge of the dock, staring at the river like it had promised her something and never delivered. She was in black again—this time a faded cotton saree that looked like mourning and defiance rolled into one. A lit cigarette dangled between her fingers. As Ritika stepped closer, Radhika spoke without turning.
“Did you bring the brooch?”
“No.”
“Good. It belongs to no one now.”
Ritika stopped three feet away. “Why did you call me?”
“Because you listen,” Radhika said, turning at last. Her face was sharper than the photographs had suggested. Older. More hollowed by time than anger. “And because you’re not afraid to ask questions no one wants answered.”
“Did you kill Shanti?”
Radhika smiled without joy. “You always start there, don’t you? The murder. As if that’s the most important thing. Not the reasons. Not the silence before it.”
“She was your sister,” Ritika said quietly.
“Half-sister,” Radhika replied. “Half the blood, none of the name. You know what Shanti told me when she found out who I was? ‘You can stay in the movement. But not near the stage. Not in the light.’”
“Because of the scandal?”
“Because of shame,” Radhika spat. “I was a walking reminder that her father wasn’t a saint. And she built herself on sanctity. Her pink revolution. Her flawless image. She wore that saree like it made her holy. But holiness is only useful if it’s unchallenged.”
“And the money?”
Radhika laughed. “Ah, the funds. She accused me of theft. But what she didn’t say was that half those donations came from my connections. I brought women from the margins. I made her speeches real. But when the elections came, she cut me out.”
“So you decided to rewrite her story?”
“I decided to finish mine,” she said, flicking ash into the river. “Do you know what it feels like to be invisible in a story you helped build?”
Ritika sat on the low wall beside her. “You could’ve gone to the press. Told your version.”
“No one listens to shadows,” Radhika said. “They only see the light. I had to make people question the light.”
“You changed her saree.”
“She died in pink,” Radhika said. “But the world saw her in black. Because that’s what she left me with.”
Ritika’s voice trembled. “So you admit it.”
Radhika looked her in the eye. “She had a heart condition. She knew it. She never took her medication on rally days. Said it made her slow. That night, in the car, we argued. I showed her the old family photo. The one with her father and my mother. She slapped it away. Her hands shook. Her breath got shallow. She collapsed before we reached the next street.”
“You didn’t help her?”
“I held her,” Radhika whispered. “But I didn’t call for help. I let her go.”
Ritika stared at her. “That’s still murder.”
“Is it?” Radhika said. “Or was it letting nature run its course?”
“And the saree?”
“She died in pink. That wasn’t her ending. That was hers. Not mine. I took her home. Dressed her in black. Like the first day I met her—as an intern, in the shadows. I gave her back to the world the way I first saw her. Unadorned. Unreachable.”
“You wrote the notes. Sent the brooch. The diary.”
“I wanted someone to know,” Radhika said. “Someone who’d understand that this wasn’t revenge. It was authorship. It was the only power I had left.”
Silence hung heavy between them. The river lapped against the pillars. Ritika’s heart thudded in her ears.
“Why me?” she asked.
“Because you’re the only one who looked at the saree and asked why.”
Ritika took a deep breath. “What happens now?”
Radhika stood. “Now? You write. Isn’t that what you do?”
“And you?”
“I disappear,” she said. “Like all shadows eventually must.”
But before Ritika could speak, a pair of headlights flooded the dock. ACP Roy’s voice rang out. “Radhika Mondal. You’re under arrest.”
Ritika stood, shocked. “How—”
“I tracked your location,” Roy said, stepping out of the car. “We couldn’t wait.”
Radhika didn’t run. She lifted her hands, her face calm. “Ah. So the truth gets a handcuff.”
Roy cuffed her silently. She looked once at Ritika. “Write it all. Even the parts that make me a villain. Especially those.”
As she was led away, Ritika sat back on the wall, staring at the cigarette still burning at the edge of the dock.
She had the brooch.
She had the diary.
She had the confession.
But she still didn’t know if the real story had just ended—or finally begun.
Part 7: Ink on a Broken Legacy
The story broke at 8:17 AM. “Half-sister of murdered councillor arrested in shocking twist.” Ritika hadn’t slept. Her editor had wanted to run with the scoop immediately, but she asked for a few more hours—just enough time to write the truth, not just the headline. The article had gone live with a lead image of Shanti in her pink saree, smiling at the crowd during her last rally. Under it, a single line from the piece stood out: “She died a leader, but the woman who changed her saree wrote the final chapter.” The city responded in chaos. Some called it justice, others a betrayal. Political rivals pounced. Feminist groups were divided—was Radhika a villain, or a mirror of what power suppresses? Ritika stayed out of the noise. She sat in the corner of the newsroom, headphones in, listening again to the interview she’d recorded on the river dock. The tremble in Radhika’s voice, the defiance, the weary calm—it was all there, woven into every word. She wasn’t just seeking attention. She was demanding memory.
Roy called her to the station in the afternoon. Radhika was in holding, silent. Not a word since the arrest. “She won’t talk to us,” he said. “But she asked for you.” Ritika entered the narrow room. Radhika sat behind the glass, eyes dull but still piercing. “They’re going to reduce it to headlines,” she said. “I know.” “Did you keep the saree?” “Yes.” “Don’t let them bury her in black,” Radhika said. “That was my story, not hers.” “You told me she wore it like a throne. Now you want her back in pink?” “Yes,” Radhika whispered. “Because the world believes in endings. Let hers be the one she chose.”
Ritika nodded, throat tight. Outside, Roy stood waiting. “She’ll be tried for tampering with a corpse. Maybe even manslaughter. But not murder. No proof she caused the heart attack.” “She confessed.” “She confessed to omission, not action,” Roy replied. “And confession isn’t always conviction.”
The funeral was held two days later. Crowds spilled into the street. There were speeches, tributes, floral processions. But the moment that stayed with everyone came at the very end. As the body was brought out, draped in pink silk, the crowd fell silent. No slogans. No chants. Just that color—defiant, soft, powerful. The golden lotus brooch lay pinned to her chest.
Ritika watched from the side, notebook untouched. She didn’t write that day. She simply remembered.
Later that night, back in her flat, Ritika opened the last envelope she’d received from Radhika—one she hadn’t dared read. Inside was a short letter.
“Some stories are born pink. Some turn black. Yours, Ritika, is the color of ink. Write well.”
She turned the page over. A postscript in smaller, tighter handwriting:
“There was one more person who knew. Anuradha.”
Ritika blinked.
What did that mean?
Anuradha knew?
Of course she knew about Meera’s existence—but was there more?
She called Roy instantly. “I need to speak to Anuradha again. Alone.”
The old red-brick house in Salt Lake looked emptier this time. Anuradha opened the door in a plain white saree, no makeup, eyes dark. “I figured you’d come.”
“I need the truth,” Ritika said. “All of it.”
Anuradha walked slowly to the drawing room, motioned for Ritika to sit. “What do you think you missed?”
“You knew Radhika was Meera,” Ritika said. “But you didn’t tell Shanti until it was too late.”
Anuradha sighed. “She was already suspicious. She found the old letters. Asked me. I confirmed it.”
“But why not tell her earlier?”
Anuradha’s voice trembled. “Because I was afraid. Of how it would change everything. Of what she might do. Shanti was strong, but she was also proud. The family name meant everything to her.”
“You thought she’d disown her publicly.”
“She did,” Anuradha said. “And it broke something inside both of them.”
Ritika stared. “But Radhika said something else. That you—someone—knew about the death. That she didn’t call for help. Did you?”
Anuradha turned sharply. “No. I swear. She came to me after. Shaking. Terrified. She said, ‘Didi’s gone. I didn’t mean to.’ I told her to go. Disappear. That if she stayed, they’d eat her alive.”
“You helped her escape justice.”
“I helped a girl who had already lost everything,” Anuradha said. “And I buried a sister who wanted only to protect her name.”
Ritika stood slowly. “You buried the truth, Anuradha. That doesn’t protect anyone.”
“No,” Anuradha said quietly. “But it does give the living a chance to survive.”
As Ritika walked back through the humid night, her phone buzzed. It was her editor.
“We need to run a follow-up. Something deeper. The emotional core.”
“I’ll write it,” she said. “But not tonight.”
She reached home, lit a single candle, and placed the pink saree beside it.
Tomorrow she would write again.
But tonight, she mourned—not just the woman in pink, not just the shadow in black—but the story in between, bruised by truth and bound in ink.
Part 8: The Story That Chose Its Writer
The newsroom was quieter than usual. Morning meetings ran on autopilot, editors mumbled into their tea, and the printer coughed every few minutes like a tired old man trying to stay relevant. Ritika sat at her desk, fingers hovering over her keyboard, the pink saree folded neatly beside her laptop in a plain cotton bag. It was strange, how something so delicate had carried so much weight—more than a press badge, more than a byline. She had rewritten the final draft of her piece three times but still couldn’t find the words that felt right. Not for Shanti. Not for Radhika. Not even for herself.
Her editor passed behind her chair, paused, and said without looking, “You don’t have to carry their ghosts. Just tell the truth.”
Ritika replied softly, “It’s not their ghosts I’m worried about. It’s mine.”
By noon, she clicked “Publish.” The article went live under a new title: “The Story That Chose Its Writer: Love, Power, and a Pink Saree.” It didn’t open with politics or police reports. It began with the brooch. A girl, once invisible, who wanted to be seen. A woman, once revered, who tried to protect her image at any cost. And another woman—a journalist—who never thought she’d be asked to become part of the very narrative she was covering.
Reactions poured in instantly. Some readers praised the nuance. Others condemned the empathy shown to Radhika. Political groups reacted along expected lines. But for the first time, Ritika didn’t read the comments. She just saved a PDF of the article and mailed it to herself with the subject line: In case I forget what truth feels like.
She visited the detention centre that evening. Radhika looked thinner. The defiance had quieted. But when Ritika entered the room, her eyes brightened faintly.
“You wrote it?”
“I did,” Ritika replied.
“Did you protect me?”
“I told the truth,” she said. “Even the parts that hurt you. Especially those.”
Radhika nodded. “Then it’s done.”
“You could appeal,” Ritika said. “You could tell your side in court.”
Radhika shook her head. “I’ve already had my trial. It happened inside your article. The world will judge me from the page, not the dock.”
“You were right, though,” Ritika added. “About stories choosing their writers.”
Radhika tilted her head. “And did this one choose you?”
“No,” Ritika said. “It made me earn it.”
That night, Ritika received one last envelope. This one postmarked from Salt Lake. Inside was a single photograph—grainy, scanned from an old album. Two little girls, one in a school uniform, the other in oversized clothes, laughing on a rooftop. On the back, scribbled in blue ink: Meera & Shanti, 1999. Before names mattered.
There was no sender.
No signature.
Just the past, refusing to stay buried.
Ritika placed the photo between the pages of her notebook. Some days later, she received an invitation to speak at a media ethics seminar. The panel topic was “When Reporters Become Witnesses.” She accepted, unsure if she’d have anything to say.
At the event, a student asked, “How did it feel to hold the story in your hands?”
Ritika paused, then said, “It didn’t feel like power. It felt like weight. Like a saree soaked in rain—heavy, clinging, and full of memory.”
A few days later, she visited the Pink Lotus Centre. Mita Sen was organizing a reading space in Shanti’s memory. “We want you to inaugurate it,” she said. “And we want to display that pink saree. If that’s okay.”
Ritika nodded. “It belongs here more than it ever did in an evidence locker.”
And so it was.
A glass case. A soft pink fabric folded neatly. The brooch gleaming under soft light. And beneath it, a plaque:
“In memory of stories that survived—even when the people didn’t.”
Ritika stood alone before it, the silence around her almost sacred.
She didn’t think of the body on the rooftop. She didn’t think of Radhika’s cold confession. She didn’t even think of the article she wrote. She thought of the two girls in the photo.
Before the politics. Before the grief. Before the saree turned black.
Just two sisters on a roof, laughing under the same sun.
Maybe that was the real beginning.
And maybe, just maybe, it had waited all this time to find its ending.
In ink.
The Woman in the Frame
Years later, the photograph hung in a quiet corner of the reading room at the Pink Lotus Centre. No caption, no fanfare—just two young girls caught in a moment of shared laughter on a rooftop somewhere in rural Bengal. Most visitors didn’t recognize them. To the untrained eye, it was simply a sweet childhood memory. But Ritika Sen, now a senior investigative journalist with her own column, knew exactly who they were. Shanti and Meera. The woman in pink. The woman in black. Before everything that happened. Before truth and politics and grief got in the way.
The saree, preserved in glass, had become a kind of talisman for the women who passed through the Centre’s doors. Survivors of abuse, aspiring leaders, single mothers, young interns—they would pause before it, some touching the glass lightly, others whispering things that only the fabric could hear. It had become a shrine, not to a martyr, but to a woman who dared to be more than her title. And the brooch—golden lotus, once the emblem of ego and authority—now simply glinted as a symbol of contradiction and courage.
Ritika still visited sometimes, especially on Shanti’s birthday. On this particular morning, the air was cool and quiet, the Centre nearly empty. She stood before the glass case and remembered everything. The rooftop. The argument. The shift from pink to black. Radhika’s voice. Anuradha’s guilt. And her own slow transformation—from observer to participant, from chronicler to caretaker of the story.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Roy.
“She’s getting out today. Thought you should know.”
Ritika stared at the screen. She hadn’t heard Radhika’s name in over two years. After the case, Radhika had pleaded guilty to concealing a body and misleading an investigation. A relatively short sentence. Enough time to be forgotten, or remembered in twisted pieces.
Ritika didn’t reply. But hours later, almost without realizing it, she found herself walking through an alley off College Street, where a secondhand bookshop used to stand. It was gone now. In its place, a tiny café blinked into existence, like memory deciding to become something new. As she passed, she noticed a woman seated at the back, alone, her face half-covered by a cotton shawl. Thin wrists. Dark eyes. Familiar silence.
Ritika didn’t stop. But the woman looked up. And nodded.
That was all.
No greeting. No explanation. Just recognition. Two women who had once rewritten another woman’s ending. One with ink. The other with silence.
Back home, Ritika pulled out her old notebook. The one with the photo still tucked between pages. She flipped to a blank page and began to write—not for print, not for a reader, but for herself.
“The first time I saw her, she was in pink. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t there at all. In between, she became a story I thought I was chasing. But she was chasing me back.”
She paused, then added:
“Some stories don’t end. They become sarees. Worn again and again. Each time, a little softer. A little stronger.”
She closed the notebook.
Outside, the city moved on—honking, bargaining, shouting, dreaming.
Inside, Ritika let the silence settle.
The story had chosen her once.
Now, she had finally chosen to let it go.
But she would always carry the weight of pink.
And the memory of a woman who lived, died, and was reborn—one saree at a time.
END
