The Forgotten Song

Ishita Malhotra

Part 1 – The Caller at Midnight

The studio smelled faintly of dust and old vinyl. Anika leaned back on her swivel chair, headphones pressing gently against her ears, her fingers drumming idly on the console as the clock blinked past midnight. Kolkata outside was muffled rain and the occasional tram bell. Inside, her voice filled the silence—smooth, warm, designed to keep lonely listeners company. “This is Anika on Midnight Melodies. Sometimes the right song finds you when you least expect it. Stay with me tonight.” She smiled into the microphone, though no one saw her, only heard.

Her show was running into its third hour, and she had exhausted her usual playlist of moody retro and whispered ghazals. The intern had left earlier, muttering about rain. Alone, restless, she wandered to the locked cabinet at the back. It hadn’t been opened in years. Keys hung by the console. She hesitated, then, without quite knowing why, slipped them into the lock. The door creaked, releasing a breath of forgotten air. Rows of vinyl records leaned against each other like silent witnesses. She pulled one out at random—its cover yellowed, the title nearly erased, just a faint swirl of ink. She dusted it, slipped it onto the turntable, and set the needle.

The first notes trembled into the night. A low, aching violin, followed by a woman’s voice, smoky, intimate, carrying a sorrow that felt alive even now. Anika froze. She had never heard it before. It wasn’t part of any known catalogue. But the song—whatever it was—was heartbreak and hope stitched together, a melody like rain sliding down a windowpane. Without thinking, she let it play on air.

The phone line blinked red almost immediately. Startled, she took the call. “Hello, this is Anika.”

A silence. Then a male voice, cracked but steady, filled her headphones. “Where did you find that song?”

Anika blinked. “In the archives. Why?”

“You shouldn’t have played it,” he said, low, almost pleading.

Something about his tone made her heart quicken. “Why not?”

Another pause. Rain hammered harder against the studio glass. “Because it was never meant to be heard again. That song—” his breath caught. “It belonged to us. To a love that ended a lifetime ago.”

The line went dead.

Anika sat frozen, staring at the silent console lights. The record still spun, the woman’s voice still haunting the airwaves. She didn’t even ask his name. But his words clung to her skin like the monsoon humidity: It belonged to us.

She ended the show mechanically, thanking listeners, promising to return tomorrow. The studio felt heavier now, filled with ghosts of music and memory. Packing her bag, she couldn’t resist slipping the vinyl record into its sleeve and tucking it inside. Against protocol, yes. But something in her bones whispered this wasn’t just a song—it was a story waiting to be told.

Outside, the city was drenched. Streetlights smeared into puddles, rickshaw pullers huddled under plastic sheets, tea stalls steamed. She held the record tight to her chest as though it might dissolve in the rain. At her flat, she made tea, sat by the window, and placed the record on her own old player. Again, the melody unfolded like smoke, filling the room. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she wasn’t in her cramped rented flat at all—she was elsewhere, another time, another city, where two people might have once danced in secret to this very tune.

Who was the caller? Why did he sound like the song had carved pieces out of his life? And who was the woman singing—her voice rich with unshed tears?

The next night, she played the song again. And again, the phone rang. Same time. Same voice.

“I told you not to play it,” he said, though softer this time.

“Then tell me why,” Anika replied. “Tell me who you are.”

He sighed, a long weary sound. “My name doesn’t matter. But once—long ago—I loved someone more than the world. And that song… it was ours. It was the last thing we created before everything was taken away.”

“Taken away?”

A hollow chuckle. “Yes. Time. Circumstance. Mistakes. Call it what you want. She sang it for me, the night before she left. We promised no one else would ever hear it. Yet here it is, echoing through your studio, through my old radio, like she’s come back to haunt me.”

Anika leaned closer to the mic, forgetting the hundreds listening silently. “Maybe it isn’t haunting. Maybe it’s reminding you.”

The man didn’t answer at first. Then: “If you truly want to know, if you’re willing to walk into someone else’s unfinished story… meet me.”

Her throat tightened. “Where?”

“College Street. The old record shop. Tomorrow at dusk.”

The line clicked.

For a moment Anika thought she had imagined it. But the address was clear in her mind. She sat back, heartbeat wild. She should forget it, she told herself. Strangers and midnight songs weren’t safe. Yet curiosity tugged at her, stronger than fear. Because maybe, just maybe, the song wasn’t only about the past. Maybe it was about what could still be found.

The next evening, the rain softened into a drizzle as she walked down College Street. Bookstalls spilled onto the pavements, the smell of ink and wet paper thick in the air. The old record shop leaned against its neighbors, dusty glass front filled with faded posters. Inside, the air was cooler, scented with vinyl and time.

A man stood waiting by the counter. Tall, silver-haired, with eyes that still carried shadows of youth. He held no umbrella, his shoulders damp. When he turned and saw her, something flickered in his gaze—recognition, though they had never met.

“You came,” he said simply.

“Yes,” Anika whispered.

And in that pause, between the smell of rain and vinyl, between the hum of city life outside and the quiet around them, Anika felt the first thread of a story pulling her in—one that began long before she was born, and one that might yet entwine with her own.

Part 2 – The Record Shop Confession

The record shop smelled of mildew and mothballs, a place where time seemed to rest in dusty grooves. Old gramophones, stacks of cassettes, posters of half-forgotten singers yellowed by decades. Anika stood near the doorway, her umbrella dripping quietly onto the floor, while the man—tall, shoulders stooped under the weight of something unseen—watched her with eyes that seemed to carry more winters than his silver hair admitted.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said at last, though his tone was less warning than weary resignation.

“Then why invite me?” Anika asked, her voice steady despite the tremor in her chest.

He gave a soft, humorless laugh. “Because maybe I wanted to see if anyone still cared. If anyone believed in the ghosts that songs leave behind.”

Anika stepped closer, her shoes scuffing the wooden floor. “Tell me about the song. Please.”

The man’s gaze lingered on her face, as if testing her resolve. Then he nodded slowly, gesturing toward the back corner where an old sofa sagged under the weight of years. They sat, the rain whispering faintly against the glass front of the shop.

“It was 1974,” he began, his voice measured, like a man retracing a memory he had carried too long. “Calcutta was a different city then. We were young, foolish, and thought the world could bend for us. Her name was Leela.” His lips shaped the name as though it was both blessing and curse. “She sang in smoky bars, in little theatres. Her voice—” he paused, eyes closing briefly. “Her voice could cut through silence like fire through paper.”

Anika leaned forward, caught in the current of his words.

“She and I… we weren’t supposed to meet. I was a student of economics, already promised a secure future by my father’s banking career. She was everything opposite—bohemian, reckless, alive. But music pulled me. I’d sneak away from lectures just to hear her sing. One evening, she looked at me through the crowd, and it felt like she had been waiting all along.”

The shop seemed to shrink around them as his voice softened. “We loved without maps. Days of endless talking, nights filled with music. She wrote that song one monsoon evening in her small rented flat, the air thick with the smell of wet earth. I still remember her sitting by the window, hair damp, her voice shaping words that weren’t just lyrics—they were a promise. We recorded it on a single vinyl, one copy only. She pressed it into my hands, saying, ‘This is ours. No one else should ever hear it.’”

Anika touched the sleeve of the record she carried in her bag, shivering.

“What happened?” she asked, though her heart braced for sorrow.

The man’s eyes clouded. “My father found out. He said she was beneath us, a singer in cheap bars, a disgrace. I tried to fight, but you must understand—it was another time. Money, family, reputation—those chains were heavier than love. He sent me away to Bombay. By the time I came back, she was gone.”

“Gone?”

“No forwarding address. No word. Just vanished. Some said she left for Madras, others that she ran away with another musician. I searched for years. I never found her. All I had was that record. And when I played it, I couldn’t bear the weight of her voice. So I buried it away. Promised myself I would never let anyone hear it again.”

Anika’s throat tightened. “But somehow, it ended up in the radio archives.”

He nodded grimly. “I gave it once to a studio technician, thinking maybe I could release it under her name. But the shame of my silence stopped me. I asked him to destroy it. He didn’t. Perhaps he couldn’t. And now, decades later, you played it.”

The rain outside grew heavier, as though the city itself mourned with him. Anika felt the song’s ache all over again, but now it had a face, a history, a wound. “Do you… do you believe she’s still alive?”

His lips curved in something between hope and despair. “Sometimes I dream she is. That she hears it somewhere and remembers me. But dreams are cruel companions.”

Silence lingered, broken only by the hum of a ceiling fan. Then Anika spoke, her words surprising even herself. “Maybe this isn’t about ghosts. Maybe it’s about unfinished stories. If you couldn’t find her, perhaps I can.”

His eyes snapped to hers. “Why would you do that?”

“Because songs like this don’t come twice. And because—” she hesitated, fingers tightening around her bag strap. “Because when I played it, it didn’t just feel like someone else’s love story. It felt like something waiting to find its way forward. Through me. Through you. Through both of us.”

For a moment, he studied her as though she were someone he’d dreamed but never expected to meet. Then he smiled, faint and fragile. “You have her fire in your eyes. Perhaps that’s why I trusted you enough to call.”

They spoke until the shopkeeper began locking shutters. He told her fragments—Leela’s favorite tea stall by the tram depot, the songs she scribbled in old diaries, the places they used to walk near the Hooghly. Each memory was a breadcrumb, scattered across a city that had changed but not forgotten.

When Anika finally stepped out into the night, the drizzle had slowed, the streetlamps casting long reflections. She clutched the record to her chest, her heart a storm of questions. She had walked into someone else’s unfinished love, but it no longer felt like trespass. It felt like calling.

Back in her flat, she placed the record once more on the player. As Leela’s voice filled the room, Anika whispered into the dark: “I’ll find you.”

And somewhere in the city, perhaps, the rain carried her promise farther than she knew.

Part 3 – The Song in the Rain

The city was a damp diary of memories waiting to be opened. After her meeting in the record shop, Anika felt as though Kolkata itself had shifted, streets humming with secrets she had never noticed before. Every tramline, every tea stall seemed to whisper fragments of a story that belonged to someone else but had somehow become hers too.

She began her search with the tram depot near Shyambazar, the one the old man had spoken of with a half-smile. Morning rain still clung to the rails, the air heavy with rust and chai. The depot was alive with voices—conductors in blue shirts shouting numbers, men huddled over newspapers, women balancing baskets. She asked around gently, a stranger threading her way through routines. Most shook their heads, unfamiliar with the name “Leela.” But one elderly chai vendor paused, squinting through cataract-fogged eyes.

“Leela?” he echoed, stirring milk into his boiling pot. “Ah, long time ago. There was a girl, sang while waiting for the tram. Voice like honey. She used to sit here with her notebook, scribbling, humming. The men would ask for songs instead of tea. I used to give her extra sugar free of cost.” He chuckled softly, as though the memory sweetened his tea again. “One day she stopped coming. We thought maybe she married rich and left. That’s what happens to singers sometimes.”

Anika scribbled notes in her small diary, her heart racing. So Leela was real, her presence woven into the fabric of the city. She thanked the man and boarded a tram herself, letting it carry her down College Street. The city passed by in blurred frames—bookstalls stacked like fortresses of yellowed paper, narrow alleys smelling of frying oil, old colonial facades stained by rain. She thought of Leela in the 1970s, sitting by the same rails, voice spilling into the ordinary chaos, someone noticing, someone falling in love.

Her next stop was the Hooghly riverfront. The old man had spoken of their walks by the water, evenings stitched with the smell of the river and the distant toll of temple bells. The ghats were crowded with worshippers, boatmen, children diving into murky waters. But tucked between the bustle, she found a small stone step where the noise thinned. She imagined Leela here, sari damp from spray, notebook balanced on her lap, sketching lyrics while the river carried dreams away.

Anika took out the record sleeve from her bag and traced the faded ink. The vinyl itself seemed alive, a pulse of history. She wondered if Leela had written other songs, hidden somewhere in notebooks lost to time.

As twilight spread, rain began again—fine needles pricking the river’s skin. Anika sheltered under the awning of a temple, clutching her umbrella, when she noticed a small music shop across the street. Its signboard was peeling, letters barely legible, but inside, dim light glowed against stacks of harmoniums and tablas. She stepped in, drawn by instinct.

The shopkeeper, a wiry man with a trimmed mustache, looked up. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for information about a singer from the seventies,” Anika said carefully. “Her name was Leela. She sang in small theatres, maybe even recorded privately. Do you remember her?”

The man frowned, tapping his counter. “Leela… yes, there was such a name. She came here once or twice, asking about recording equipment. Said she wanted to preserve her songs. I was a boy then, but I remember because she had a laugh that filled this whole shop. People talked about her—a singer with the kind of voice that made men silent. But then—” he shrugged—“she disappeared. Some said she moved to Madras to chase films. Others whispered she got sick. Nobody knows.”

Anika’s pulse quickened. Madras. A new trail. She thanked him and was about to leave when he stopped her. “Wait. If you’re serious about finding her, there’s one more place. The Rangmahal Theatre, north of Hedua. She sang there once in a charity show. The old caretaker might still remember.”

By the time Anika reached Rangmahal, the rain was coming down in silver sheets, thunder growling low. The theatre stood like a relic, its façade cracked, posters faded to ghosts. The main doors were chained, but a side entrance hung ajar. She slipped inside, the air thick with mildew. Broken seats, torn curtains, dust that turned the beam of her phone into fog.

“Hello?” her voice echoed.

A figure shuffled out of the darkness—an old man, bent-backed, holding a lantern. “Who’s there?”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m looking for someone. I was told you might know. A singer named Leela. She performed here long ago.”

The caretaker’s eyes flickered. He set the lantern down, rubbing his hands. “Leela… yes, yes, I remember. She sang one night when the rains flooded the streets. Barely twenty people came, but her voice filled this hall like it was the Royal Albert. After that, I saw her once more—walking out with a young man. Tall, handsome. Looked like he belonged in suits, not here. They were laughing. She said it was her last performance. That she was leaving.”

Anika’s breath caught. “Do you know where?”

The old man shook his head slowly. “No. Only that she cried as she sang that night. Like she was saying goodbye.”

The hall seemed to echo with invisible music. Anika closed her eyes, trying to imagine it—the storm outside, a near-empty theatre, and a girl with a voice too large for the world.

When she stepped back out into the rain, her hair plastered to her forehead, she felt both closer and farther from Leela. Every place she touched gave her a fragment, a hint, but no ending. And yet, she could not stop.

That night, back at the studio, she told her listeners about a singer forgotten by the city, whose song still haunted the rain. She didn’t reveal the name, not yet, but her words trembled with the urgency of discovery. The phone lines lit up with curious calls, but none from him—the old man who had set her on this path. For the first time, she wondered if he was afraid of what she might find.

As the show ended, she set the vinyl back on the turntable. The first notes swelled, filling the empty studio. And just then, as though in answer, her phone buzzed with a new message from an unknown number.

It read simply: “Stop looking. Some songs are dangerous to remember.”

Anika stared at the glowing screen, heart pounding. She had crossed a line, and someone knew.

Part 4 – The Warning and the Diary

The message pulsed on her phone like a heartbeat. Stop looking. Some songs are dangerous to remember. The studio was silent except for the vinyl’s crackle, the singer’s voice unraveling grief across decades. Anika stared at the words, her hands cold. It wasn’t the old man—his voice was marked by resignation, not menace. This message carried something else, something sharper. A threat, or perhaps a warning from someone who believed danger still lingered in melody.

She didn’t reply. The screen dimmed, but the unease didn’t fade. She packed the vinyl carefully, her eyes sweeping the empty studio, suddenly aware of shadows that seemed too watchful. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the city carried the smell of damp walls, a restless quiet.

At home she brewed tea she barely touched, her mind replaying fragments—the chai vendor, the music shopkeeper, the caretaker, all voices pointing to a woman who had once been real. And now, this message. Who wanted her to stop? Who still carried Leela’s story like a wound sharp enough to cut strangers?

Sleep came late and jagged, and when it broke at dawn, it left her restless. She decided she wouldn’t be cowed. Stories lived because someone remembered. If she stopped, Leela would remain dust and whispers.

The next day, she retraced her notes, lingering on one clue she had overlooked—the old caretaker’s words: She scribbled lyrics in notebooks. Where would those notebooks be? If Leela left suddenly, perhaps she abandoned them somewhere. The thought tugged at her until she found herself back on College Street, weaving through the labyrinth of bookshops.

In a crumbling store that smelled of ink and mildew, she asked the owner about personal manuscripts, old diaries, anything abandoned by families clearing attics. The man gave her a practiced look. “You’re not the first to ask. Poets, students, lovers of dead writers—they all think magic hides in forgotten pages. Sometimes it does. Follow me.”

He led her to a back corner stacked with boxes. Dust lay thick, but Anika’s hands trembled as she rifled through piles of brittle paper, ledgers, half-written poems. And then—there it was. A notebook bound in blue cloth, the cover soft from use. On the first page, a name written in slanted, urgent hand: Leela Sen.

Her throat tightened. She opened it. Inside were pages of lyrics, some crossed out, some rewritten. Scribbled margins with small sketches of rainclouds, birds, faces she might have known. And in the middle, in bold ink, the first lines of the very song etched on the vinyl:

If you listen to the rain long enough,
It will tell you who waits, and who has gone.

Anika’s hands shook as she traced the words. The shopkeeper peered over her shoulder, unimpressed. “Found something?”

“Yes,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “Everything.”

She bought the notebook for a handful of notes, the man shrugging at her excitement. Outside, the drizzle had returned, as though the sky approved her discovery. She carried the diary pressed to her chest like an inheritance.

That night, she read every page. Leela’s words breathed from the paper, unfiltered, urgent. Songs of longing, of rebellion, of a woman refusing to be caged. One entry caught Anika’s breath—it was written not as a song but as a confession:

They will never let us be. He is tied to chains heavier than his heart can break. If he goes, I will not wait in silence. I will leave before silence kills me. But this song, this one, will always be his. Even if he forgets, even if the world never knows my name, the rain will carry it. Someone will listen one day. Someone will find me in it.

Anika closed the diary, her chest aching. This wasn’t just about love lost. It was about erasure—Leela had known she would vanish, that the world would not bother to remember a singer who didn’t fit its rules. And yet she had written, certain someone would hear her again.

The studio felt different the next evening as Anika spoke to her listeners. Her words were measured, but beneath them throbbed urgency. “Sometimes, songs are not just songs. They are letters written across time. They wait for ears that can hear, hearts that can carry them forward. Tonight, I played one such song. And tonight, I hold proof it was real.” She didn’t reveal the diary, not yet, but her voice trembled with the weight of what she carried.

When she returned home, she found another message on her phone. Same number. You don’t understand. Some stories can ruin lives. Stop before it ruins yours.

Fear pulsed at the edges of her resolve. Who was this shadow following her search? But then she thought of Leela, scribbling her notebook, whispering to the future: Someone will listen one day.

Anika whispered back into the dark: “I am listening.”

The next morning, she decided to visit the old man again. He deserved to see the diary, to know she had found fragments of Leela still alive on paper. She carried it to the record shop, rain pattering gently on the shutters. He was already there, leaning on the counter, eyes heavy.

When he saw the diary, he froze. His hands trembled as he touched the cover. “Where did you—”

“College Street. She wrote these.”

He opened it, fingers tracing words like relics. Tears pooled in eyes that had perhaps not wept in years. “Her handwriting… her fire… she didn’t forget me after all.”

But then his expression shifted, darkened. He snapped the diary shut, clutching it to his chest. “You shouldn’t have brought this. Whoever sent you that message—they’re right. Some songs are dangerous.”

Anika stepped back. “Dangerous how? This is her truth. Don’t you want it told?”

He shook his head. “You don’t know the men who silenced her. They still exist, their power hasn’t died. If they learn you’re digging this up, they’ll stop you. They stopped her once. They can stop you.”

Outside, thunder rolled across the city like a verdict.

Anika’s pulse hammered. She looked at him—this man still shackled by his past—and then at the diary, alive with Leela’s voice. She realized then that danger or not, she couldn’t stop. Because some stories were worth carrying, even if they burned.

Part 5 – The Storm of Memory

The diary lay between them on the record shop counter like a living wound. The old man’s fingers trembled as he gripped it, his face pale, eyes swimming with memory. The lantern above flickered with each gust of monsoon wind seeping through cracks in the shutters. Anika watched him silently, waiting, but he only shook his head again and again, as though denying the past could make it vanish.

“She was silenced,” he said finally, his voice cracking like brittle wood. “Not by choice, not by chance—by men who feared her voice. My father, his friends, men with power who decided who was respectable and who wasn’t. They wanted me back in line, and they wanted her gone. You don’t understand, Anika. They could destroy lives with a word.”

“And you let them,” Anika said, her tone sharper than she intended.

The old man flinched, but didn’t argue. “Yes,” he whispered. “I was a coward. I thought I could protect her later, find her, make things right. But by the time I looked, she had already disappeared. And now, after decades, you open the wound again. Do you not see the danger?”

Anika leaned closer, her eyes fierce. “Danger doesn’t erase truth. She left her words behind for someone to find. And I did. Don’t you think she wanted this story to live?”

The shutters rattled violently as thunder cracked outside. Rain began again, fierce and endless, as though the city itself demanded reckoning. The old man’s grip loosened on the diary. His shoulders sagged, his voice little more than breath. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she always knew someone would come after us. But if you continue, Anika, you must be prepared. The past isn’t gentle. It will tear you if you let it.”

She reached for the diary, sliding it back into her bag. “Then let it tear. I’d rather be torn than silent.”

That night the storm grew wild. Streets flooded, tramlines disappeared under water, the city huddled in shadows. In her flat, with power cut and only candlelight spilling across the pages, Anika pored over the diary again. Near the back she discovered something she had missed before—tucked between two pages, a folded letter. Yellowed, edges frayed, but ink still legible. It was addressed not to the old man, but simply to anyone who listens.

If you are holding this, then I am gone. Not dead, I hope, but gone from this city that never wanted me. They may call me reckless, shameful, but I will not sing in chains. I go to find a stage that is mine, where no one can silence me. If he remembers me, tell him I sang not to be remembered, but to be free.

Anika’s hands shook. Leela hadn’t vanished into thin air—she had left, escaped, tried to carry her voice elsewhere. Madras. The whispers were true. Maybe she had even recorded more songs. Maybe she lived still, her voice lost in the noise of time but not extinguished.

Her phone buzzed on the table, startling her. Another message. Same number.

You found the diary. Stop now. If you reveal her story, you’ll bring ruin not only to yourself but to him. Some legacies are better buried.

Anger cut through Anika’s fear. Whoever sent this knew far too much. She typed back before doubt could stop her: Who are you? What do you know about Leela?

Minutes passed. No reply. The storm roared louder. She set her phone down, heart pounding, and turned back to the diary.

At the studio the following evening, the storm’s tail still lashed against windows, she decided not to play the vinyl. Instead, she spoke—her voice steadier than she felt. “Listeners, sometimes songs carry not only melody but memory. Last night I found words from a singer long forgotten. She wrote not to be remembered, but to be free. And freedom is the song we all long for, isn’t it?”

The lines lit up. Calls poured in—curious, moved, unsettled. Some demanded names, others shared their own stories of voices silenced by family, by society, by fear. Anika listened, answered gently, but kept Leela’s name hidden. For now.

When she left the studio past midnight, she sensed it—the feeling of being followed. Footsteps too steady behind her, a figure at the edge of lamplight. She quickened her pace through rain-slick streets, clutching her umbrella like a shield. When she turned sharply onto her lane, the footsteps vanished.

In her flat, dripping and shaken, she locked the door and leaned against it, chest heaving. She thought of Leela walking alone decades ago, chased not by shadows but by entire structures of power. How much courage it had taken to leave, to carve silence into song.

She dried herself, made tea she couldn’t swallow, then placed the vinyl on the player. As the first notes filled the room, she whispered to the unseen listener on the other end of her fear: “I won’t stop. Even if you follow me. Even if you threaten me. I won’t stop.”

The record spun, the singer’s voice rising, breaking, mending. And in the storm outside, thunder answered like applause.

Part 6 – The Man in the Shadows

The city had its own way of watching, and Anika felt its gaze in every shadow. The sense of being followed did not leave her, not even in daylight. On College Street, she caught a reflection in a shop window—someone turning away just as she glanced. In the tram, she felt eyes on her back though every passenger seemed absorbed in their own world. Fear tried to sink its claws, but curiosity was fiercer. Whoever lurked behind her steps knew about Leela, perhaps more than anyone alive. And she would not run.

She decided to lay a trap. That evening, instead of going home after her show, she took a different route, weaving through alleys near Esplanade, doubling back, slipping into crowds, then cutting suddenly into a deserted lane. The footsteps followed. She quickened her pace, then spun around, her umbrella gripped like a weapon.

“Enough!” her voice rang against the wet walls. “Come out.”

A figure emerged slowly from the dark. A man, tall, wearing a raincoat that glistened under the single flickering lamp. His face was lined, his hair peppered with grey, but his eyes were alert, sharp. He didn’t look like a thug—he looked like someone used to waiting in silence.

“You shouldn’t be digging into this,” he said, voice calm, deliberate. The same cadence as the messages.

“You’ve been sending me those warnings,” Anika said. “Who are you?”

He studied her for a long moment. “Once, I was her accompanist. I played tabla for her in small bars, theatres, even on the night she recorded that song. I was there when she disappeared. I thought if I left you alone, you would stop. But you’ve gone too far.”

Anika’s heart leapt. “Then tell me what happened to her.”

The man stepped closer, rain dripping from his coat. “Leela was fire, and fire draws both worshippers and destroyers. When word spread that she loved someone from a wealthy family, powerful people took notice. They wanted the boy away, and her silenced. But she refused. She sang louder, wilder. They threatened her. And then one day, she was gone. No goodbye, no farewell—just vanished. Some say she fled to Madras, some say she was taken.”

“Taken?” Anika whispered.

“Yes.” His eyes darkened. “That’s the story no one prints. She may have been forced away, erased. She might have died. No one knows. But those men who feared her? They still live in boardrooms, in houses with marble floors. Digging up her story risks more than you understand.”

Anika shook her head, rain plastering her hair. “But you stayed silent all these years. Why? If you cared for her?”

He winced, as though struck. “Because silence was survival. I had a family to feed. I told myself I’d keep her memory alive quietly. But then I heard her voice on your show—and I knew the past was stirring again. I sent the messages to protect you, not to threaten you.”

She studied him, uncertain whether to trust. His face carried guilt carved deep, but also something else—fear that had calcified into habit.

“Do you still have anything of hers?” she asked.

The man hesitated, then reached into his coat. From an inner pocket, he pulled a cassette tape, its label smudged, almost illegible. He held it out like an offering. “Her last rehearsal with me. Never released. I’ve kept it hidden all these years.”

Anika took it carefully, her pulse racing. “Why give it to me now?”

“Because you won’t stop,” he said simply. “And maybe… maybe she deserves to be heard again, no matter the danger.”

She slipped the cassette into her bag, her fingers trembling. “Thank you. But don’t follow me again. If you truly want to honor her, trust me to carry this forward.”

The man gave a slow nod, eyes lowered, and melted back into the rain.

That night, in her flat, Anika borrowed an old cassette player from her neighbor. She inserted the tape, pressed play. A hiss filled the room, then tabla beats, faint but steady. And then—Leela’s voice. Clearer than on the vinyl, raw, unrestrained. She wasn’t singing a finished song; she was improvising, letting her voice twist and soar like the storm outside. Between verses, laughter spilled—uncontained, alive. It was a voice not haunted, but blazing.

Anika closed her eyes, tears streaming. It was as though Leela herself sat across from her, daring her to keep going.

The next evening at the studio, she debated whether to play the cassette. Her hands hovered over the controls, fear wrestling with conviction. In the end, she didn’t. Not yet. Instead, she told her listeners a story: “There are voices that were almost erased, but they left embers behind. And when we find those embers, it is our duty to keep them burning.”

When she left the studio past midnight, the streets glistened under retreating rain. She felt lighter, though danger still hovered. In her bag lay the cassette, in her heart a promise.

Yet as she reached her flat, she found her door slightly ajar. Panic surged. She pushed it open slowly. Inside, nothing looked stolen—but the diary was gone.

Her breath caught. Someone had been here. Someone wanted the past silenced once more.

But they had not taken the cassette.

Part 7 – The Theft and the Memory of Fire

The flat felt colder than the storm outside. Anika stood frozen at the threshold, the faint smell of damp leather lingering in the air. Someone had been inside. Someone deliberate, precise. Nothing else was touched—not the books on her shelves, not the money in her drawer, not the old radio on her desk. Only the diary was gone.

She shut the door, bolted it twice, then leaned against it, her breath uneven. Her hands trembled as she opened her bag and checked. The cassette was still there. Whoever had come knew exactly what to take, and exactly what to leave. It wasn’t theft for profit—it was erasure.

She lit a lamp, the power still unreliable from the storm, and sat at her table. The image of Leela’s slanted handwriting swam before her eyes. If he remembers me, tell him I sang not to be remembered, but to be free. Those words were gone now, stolen from her hands. Rage rose, hot and steady, cutting through the fear. They could steal paper, but they couldn’t steal the voice etched in her memory.

The next morning, she returned to the record shop. The old man looked up from behind the counter, his eyes widening when she told him. His hands gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles whitened. “They know,” he whispered. “I warned you, Anika. They’re watching. They’ve always been watching.”

“They took the diary,” she said flatly. “But I still have her voice.” She placed the cassette on the counter. “Do you want to hear her again?”

For a moment he didn’t move. Then, with a trembling hand, he pushed his own dusty cassette player across the table. She inserted the tape, pressed play.

Leela’s laughter filled the shop. Then her voice rose—raw, improvising, alive. The old man bowed his head, tears sliding down the lines of his face. His shoulders shook, a soundless sob tearing out of years of silence. “She’s here,” he whispered. “After all this time… she’s here.”

Anika’s own throat ached. “They can’t bury her, not anymore. Not if we keep her alive.”

But he shook his head. “You don’t know how ruthless they are. My father is gone, but his friends live still. Men who run banks, newspapers, industries. They will not let their old sins be unearthed. If the world learns they silenced her, their names will burn.”

“Then let them burn,” Anika said, her eyes fierce. “Why should her fire be snuffed out just to protect them?”

For a long moment, only Leela’s voice filled the space. Then the old man reached across, gripping Anika’s wrist. “If you fight this, they will come for you. Are you ready to pay that price?”

Her pulse raced under his hand, but she did not pull away. “Maybe it isn’t about price. Maybe it’s about choice. Leela chose to sing even when she was warned. I can’t do less.”

When she left the shop, the rain had stopped, the streets gleaming with sunlight breaking through clouds. It felt like a moment of reprieve, but the shadows in her mind deepened.

That night, at the studio, she decided to take the risk. She announced: “Tonight, you will hear something never played before on air—a rehearsal tape of a voice almost lost to history. A woman who sang not for fame, but for freedom.”

She pressed play.

Leela’s laughter spilled across the frequency, followed by the thunder of tabla, then her soaring improvisation. The phone lines lit up instantly—listeners calling, some moved to tears, some asking who she was, some simply silent, listening. Anika didn’t answer all the questions. She let the voice carry itself.

As the last notes faded, the studio felt charged, alive with more than electricity. Anika spoke softly into the microphone. “Her name was Leela. She sang in this city decades ago, and then she vanished. But voices like hers don’t die. They wait. And tonight, they found you.”

When the show ended, her phone vibrated again. Another message.

You’ve made a mistake. This will not end well for you.

She exhaled, her hands steady now. She typed back: It already has begun.

The following day, newspapers carried whispers. Social media accounts buzzed about the mysterious broadcast. Who was the forgotten singer? Why had no one heard her before? A few amateur historians began digging. Old photographs surfaced—grainy images of a young woman with storm in her eyes, standing with a microphone in a small theatre. The story had escaped the shadows, and Anika knew it couldn’t be pulled back.

But with it came more danger. As she walked home that evening, a black car slowed beside her. The window rolled down. A man in a crisp suit leaned out, his voice smooth but cold. “Miss Anika, some silences must remain. You’d be wise to remember that.”

The car glided away, leaving her heart thundering. She gripped her bag tighter. The cassette was inside, and with it, Leela’s defiance. She realized then that she had stepped into more than a love story. She had stepped into a battlefield of memory and power.

At her flat, she lit a candle and set the cassette beside the vinyl. Fire and rain, past and present. She whispered into the quiet: “They can threaten, they can steal, but they can’t unmake her voice. Not while I’m alive.”

Outside, the city trembled with another oncoming storm.

Part 8 – The Voice Goes Public

By dawn, the city was already buzzing. What Anika had broadcast the night before was no longer confined to late-night listeners. Snippets of the cassette recording, captured on phones, had spilled into social media. Leela’s laughter, the tabla’s pulse, her improvisation—raw, unpolished, but unmistakably magnetic—was now looping across timelines, whispered about in offices, played in cafés.

“Who is she?” became the question on everyone’s lips. Some called her the lost siren of Calcutta. Others spun rumors—that she had died in obscurity, that she had fled abroad, that she had been erased. Blogs dug up fragments—an old theatre bill with her name, a single grainy photograph, a faded newspaper review calling her “a voice to watch.”

By afternoon, the story had escaped containment. Journalists called the radio station, demanding interviews. One national daily ran a headline: “Forgotten Singer Returns from the Past: Who Was Leela Sen?” Her face, half-shadowed, smiled from their archives onto glossy newsprint.

Anika sat at her desk in the studio, her phone buzzing endlessly. Messages from strangers poured in—some thanking her, some warning her, some simply moved. She scrolled through them with trembling fingers. She had lit a fire she couldn’t control now.

That evening, the station manager called her into his office. His tone was taut, though he tried for calm. “Anika, what have you done? We’ve been flooded with calls, half the city wants to know who this woman was. Sponsors are excited, but there are… other pressures.”

“Other pressures?” she asked.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I had two men in suits come by this morning. Powerful men. They told me to stop you from broadcasting anything further. They said it was a matter of family reputation, that you were disturbing graves best left alone. Do you understand what you’re playing with?”

Anika’s jaw tightened. “I’m playing with the truth.”

The manager sighed, pinching his brow. “You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that. But be careful. I can’t protect you if they decide to push harder.”

That night, she went on air again. Her voice, though soft, carried steel beneath. “Some songs are not entertainment—they are evidence. They remind us of lives cut short, of voices silenced. Yesterday, you heard one such voice. Tonight, you will hear her name: Leela Sen. Remember it.”

The phone lines exploded. People called in with memories, fragments. One old woman swore she had seen Leela perform at Rangmahal. A retired musician said he had once shared a stage with her, that she had sung like she carried lightning in her throat. Each call was a thread, weaving the outline of a woman history had almost erased.

But amid the flood, a different call came. A woman’s voice, low, controlled. “Stop this,” she said, the words clipped. “You’re meddling with things you don’t understand. Leela Sen is gone. Let her stay gone.”

“Who are you?” Anika asked into the microphone.

Silence. Then a click. The line went dead.

When the show ended, she stepped out into the humid night, her bag heavy with the cassette. She hadn’t gone far when she noticed him again—the man in the raincoat, the accompanist. He stood by a lamppost, waiting.

“You’ve unleashed a storm,” he said when she approached. “Do you see it now? They’re restless. You’ve rattled them.”

“Then let them rattle,” Anika shot back. “Leela deserves it.”

He studied her for a long moment, then handed her a folded paper. “This came to me today. I don’t know from whom. It has your name on it.”

Anika unfolded it under the lamplight. A single sentence, written in bold strokes: If you truly want to find her, go to Madras. Ask for the name ‘Meera Rao.’

Her heart thudded. “Meera Rao?”

The man nodded. “Could be a lead. Could be a trap. Be careful.”

That night in her flat, Anika laid the letter beside the cassette and vinyl. Three relics of a woman’s life, three keys to a story still unfinished. Madras. It fit with the whispers she had heard. Had Leela taken a new name, a new life? Or was this only bait to draw her out further?

The next day, before she could decide, the threats grew louder. A black car idled outside her building longer than comfort allowed. Anonymous emails arrived: Your career will end. Your life will be ruined. Yet alongside them came messages of hope: listeners offering to help, musicians begging for copies of the tape, women saying Leela’s defiance gave them courage.

The city itself seemed to shift. Street singers performed fragments of the leaked recording. Students painted her name on college walls: Leela Lives.

Anika realized then that she was no longer carrying this story alone. It was spreading, wildfire through dry grass. She had given the city its ghost back, and the city had claimed her.

But ghosts don’t rise without consequence. That evening, on her way to the station, she found her path blocked. Two men stepped out from an alley, faces hard. One grabbed her arm, voice low and venomous. “You’ve said enough. Stop now, or you’ll vanish like she did.”

Anika yanked free, her fear burning into anger. “She didn’t vanish. You made her vanish. And I won’t let you do it again.”

She pushed past them, her pulse racing. They didn’t chase her. They didn’t need to. Their message was clear.

That night on air, her voice did not waver. “To those who threaten, I say this: silence has already lasted too long. Leela Sen sang to be free. And freedom does not frighten me.”

Somewhere in the city, someone must have smiled. Somewhere else, someone must have seethed.

And in her bag, the letter to Madras waited, like a door she had not yet dared to open.

Part 9 – Madras, the Second Name

The train rocked gently, wheels thrumming over wet tracks, carrying Anika southward. Kolkata disappeared behind her, its rain-soaked streets and haunted theatres fading into memory. In her bag rested the cassette, the vinyl, and the folded note that whispered of another life—Meera Rao. She had boarded with little more than instinct and urgency, the sense that answers lay beyond the reach of the city that had failed to hold its singer.

The journey was long, two nights and a day through fields, forests, and towns that blurred past like half-remembered dreams. She read and reread the letter, running her fingers over the ink as though it might reveal more. She thought of Leela on a similar train decades earlier, clutching her own suitcase, leaving everything behind to step into an unknown future.

When she finally arrived in Madras, the city greeted her with heat heavy as velvet, the air salted by the sea. The language around her shifted, a rhythm unfamiliar yet musical. She checked into a small lodge near Triplicane, her notebook open, her nerves taut. The name Meera Rao became her compass.

Her search began in old music stores. She carried Leela’s photograph, the one the newspapers had unearthed, folded carefully in her diary. “Do you know her?” she asked again and again, showing it to shopkeepers, archivists, collectors. Most shook their heads. Some squinted and said she looked like a singer they remembered faintly, though under another name.

At last, in a cramped shop stacked floor to ceiling with gramophone records, a man with silver-rimmed glasses adjusted them and leaned closer. “Ah,” he murmured. “That face. Yes, I knew her. But not as Leela Sen. Here, she was Meera Rao.”

Anika’s pulse raced. “You knew her?”

“I was young then, an assistant in a studio. She came once, maybe twice. Sang for a film audition. Voice like no other. But she was never chosen. They said her tone was too raw, too fierce for cinema. She vanished soon after. Some said she lived quietly near Mylapore, teaching music. Others said she returned north. No one really knew.” He paused, then reached into a drawer, pulling out a dusty envelope. “But I kept this. An old publicity leaflet. She gave it to me herself.”

Anika unfolded it with trembling fingers. There she was—Leela, or Meera—smiling softly, her eyes still storm-lit. Beneath her picture, bold print read: Meera Rao – Classical and Modern Vocals. No address, only a phone number long obsolete.

“Do you know if she… survived?” Anika asked quietly.

The man hesitated, adjusting his glasses. “I cannot say. The years swallow people. But if she left traces, you may find them in the archives of All India Radio. Many singers passed through there, even if only briefly.”

The next morning, Anika walked to the AIR building near Marina Beach. The corridors smelled of dust and old reel tape. A clerk, amused by her determination, allowed her to comb through fragile registers. Hours passed, her eyes burning, until at last she found it—an entry dated 1976. Meera Rao – auditioned for vocal program. Status: not selected.

Her throat tightened. There was no recording, no further note. Just that single entry, a ghost reduced to a line in an old ledger.

Disheartened but not defeated, she left the archives and wandered toward the beach. The sea roared, vast and merciless, waves collapsing into white foam. She sat on the sand, pulling out the leaflet again. Meera’s eyes stared back, alive with something that refused to fade.

As the sun slid into the water, a thought struck her. If Meera had lived here, even briefly, someone in Mylapore might still remember. She asked around temples, schools, small music academies. Most shook their heads, time erasing even strong voices. But at a crumbling house painted pale yellow, an old woman nodded slowly when shown the photograph.

“Yes,” she said, her Tamil accent curling around her Bengali words. “I knew her. She lived in a room at the back, taught children to sing. Gentle, quiet, though her eyes… her eyes carried storms. She left suddenly. Said she had to go back north. She never returned.”

“When was this?” Anika pressed.

“Perhaps 1978. I cannot be sure. Two years, maybe less. After that, nothing. No letters, no word.”

The trail, once again, thinned into silence.

That night in her lodge, Anika lay awake, ceiling fan creaking above. Each lead was a fragment, each discovery a door that opened only onto fog. Yet she felt closer than ever, as though Leela’s presence—or Meera’s—was guiding her steps.

She pulled out the cassette and played it softly, Leela’s laughter mingling with the sound of the sea through the open window. In the half-light, Anika whispered, “Where did you go after this? Did you survive? Did you keep singing, even if no one listened?”

Her phone buzzed. Another message. You’re far from home. Turn back. This search will consume you.

But something had changed in her. The warnings no longer filled her with fear. They only confirmed she was on the right path. She typed back: If it consumes me, so be it. At least I’ll carry her voice with me.

The reply came quickly, chilling in its precision: Voices are not all you’ll find. Some graves, once disturbed, bury the living too.

She set the phone aside, her jaw set. Tomorrow she would return to Kolkata. But not empty-handed. She carried proof that Leela had become Meera, that she had tried to build a life in another city, that her voice had not died willingly. The rest of the story—what happened after she returned north—waited back where it began.

On the train home, as the fields blurred past, Anika felt a strange calm. She was no longer chasing shadows. She was following fire. And fire, even buried, always leaves embers.

Part 10 – The Return to Kolkata

The train slid back into Howrah under a bruised dawn sky. The city was waking, tea stalls steaming, rickshaw wheels creaking over wet cobblestones, the Hooghly still wrapped in mist. Anika stepped onto the platform with her small bag, inside it the leaflet stamped with Meera Rao, the cassette tape, and the smoldering urgency that had driven her across states. She was exhausted, but her exhaustion burned with purpose.

Kolkata looked unchanged, yet she felt she was stepping into a different city—one now humming with the ghost she had released. Posters had begun to appear on walls: Leela’s photograph, grainy but defiant, captioned with stenciled words: Leela Lives. The city had claimed her now, even if it didn’t yet know the full truth.

She went first to the record shop. The old man was waiting, as though he had known she would return. His eyes searched her face, and when she laid the leaflet on the counter, his lips trembled.

“Meera Rao,” he whispered, touching the faded paper. “So she lived. She made it that far.”

“She taught children in Madras,” Anika said quietly. “She tried to start again. But she came back here. In 1978, she returned. And then… nothing.”

The old man sank into the chair, staring at the leaflet as if it were both blessing and curse. “She came back for me,” he murmured. “And I was too late.”

Anika sat opposite him, her voice firm. “What happened when she returned? Someone must know. Someone must have seen her.”

For a long moment he said nothing. Then, slowly, he opened a drawer beneath the counter. From it he drew a photograph, yellowed, edges curling. It showed Leela—older, thinner, but unmistakable—standing in front of a small house somewhere in north Calcutta. “She came to me once,” he said, his voice ragged. “I was married by then, chained to my family, my father’s legacy. She knocked on my door, carrying nothing but her voice. I… I couldn’t let her in. My wife, my children—they wouldn’t have understood. I turned her away. I watched her walk down the street, and that was the last time.”

The words hung heavy, filling the shop with shame.

Anika’s hands clenched. “Where did she go?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Some say she lived in that small house for a while, then vanished again. Perhaps she died there. Alone.”

Silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the ceiling fan. Finally, Anika said, “You owe her more than guilt. If she died, then her story must not. Help me tell it.”

He looked at her—this young woman who had picked up the thread he had dropped decades ago—and for the first time, something shifted in his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, perhaps that is how I can repay her.”

That evening, Anika prepared for her show with unusual care. She placed the cassette on the console, the leaflet beside her, the photograph of Leela propped against her notes. When the red light blinked, she leaned into the microphone, her heart pounding.

“Tonight,” she began, “I bring you the rest of the story. You have heard her voice. You have asked who she was. Her name was Leela Sen, though in Madras she was known as Meera Rao. She was a singer who refused to bend, who carried fire in her throat. And for that, she was silenced. But she sang not to be remembered, she wrote, but to be free. Tonight, let us remember her anyway.”

She played the cassette. Leela’s laughter, her improvisations, her unbroken spirit filled the airwaves. Across the city, people stopped what they were doing—rickshaw pullers leaning on handles, students in hostels, women in kitchens. The forgotten voice threaded through their lives, binding strangers in shared silence.

When the song ended, Anika spoke again, her voice thick with emotion. “She came back to this city, hoping to find the man she loved, hoping to be heard again. But the city failed her. Let us not fail her now. Remember her name. Carry her song.”

The phone lines lit up wildly—calls from listeners crying, thanking her, demanding more. One elderly caller whispered through tears, “I knew her. I bought flowers from her once, near Hedua. She hummed as she tied them. I never knew who she was until now.”

As the night deepened, the story spread further. Newspapers, television, online platforms—all seized it. The Forgotten Song became a headline, Leela’s face appearing everywhere. She was no longer a ghost hidden in a dusty record. She had become a symbol.

But with the light came shadow. After the broadcast, as Anika left the studio, the black car was waiting again. The suited man stepped out, his expression colder than before.

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he said softly. “You’ve dragged names through mud. Powerful families will not forgive. Stop now, or you’ll meet the same end she did.”

Anika met his gaze, her fear replaced by fire. “Then let them come for me. But they cannot silence her again. Her voice is already everywhere.”

The man’s jaw tightened. He stepped back into the car and drove off.

Anika walked home through the sleeping city, her heart still pounding but her steps steady. For the first time, she felt that Leela was no longer alone. Her voice had crossed time, carried by rain, by vinyl, by cassette, by a stubborn radio jockey who refused to let it die.

In her flat, she placed the cassette back beside the vinyl. She lit a candle, its flame trembling. “You are free now,” she whispered into the night.

Outside, the city listened. And in the hush after the storm, it almost seemed as if another voice, smoky and tender, answered: Yes.