Nabin Mishra Chapter 1: The Cassette The rain had returned to Mumbai like an old debt collector—persistent, uninvited, and soaked in memory. Officer Vinayak Rane sat by the rusting grill of his Dadar flat, the yellowed curtains barely swaying as he watched water trickle down the windowpane like the slow bleed of time. His apartment was a museum of silence, its walls lined with worn furniture and an old transistor that hadn’t caught a frequency in years. He smoked his first cigarette of the day at 4 p.m., his back aching from sleep he never remembered falling into. When the…
