The Red Room

St. Cyprian’s College for the Arts stood on a hill, its sandstone walls streaked with pride and monsoon rot. Founded in 1893 for the daughters of East India Company officers, it had long since rebranded itself as a premier co-ed academy for the “arts and excellence.” Its drama programme was a crown jewel, full of jargon, imported light boards, and teachers who quoted Stanislavski between bites of quinoa salad. And yet, beneath its curated elegance, the place smelled of varnished wood, mothballs, and something older — like dust caught in colonial lace.

Mira adjusted the lighting gels in the rafters, fingers raw from friction tape. From her perch above the stage, she could see everything—the velvet curtain, the chandelier shedding tears of crystal, and below, the cast of The Red Room, rehearsing.

Cassia was centre stage. Cassia was always centre stage. Her voice cut through the air, British-tinged and honey-slick. She wore a white kurta that draped like it was hand-picked by a stylist, not the school costume closet. Her laugh during breaks was always a touch too loud, just enough to let everyone know she belonged here.

Mira watched her with a familiar bitterness. It wasn’t just Cassia’s money or her natural stage presence. It was how she was affirmed by the school’s architecture itself — the teachers, the brochures, the posters in the hall. Mira, on the other hand, was the girl from the outskirts, a scholarship student whose father worked at a tailor shop and whose mother taught math at a government school. Her English was neat, practical. No frills, no dramatic pauses embellished with foreign accents picked up on trips abroad. But here, even language carried lineage.

They told Mira she had good instincts. That she was dependable. That backstage suited her. “Every show needs a spine,” one teacher had said, gently, as if denying her an audition was a favour.

So Mira stayed in the rafters, blending into shadows, taping cords and labelling props. She knew the play better than anyone—The Red Room, a dramatic tragedy pulled from the school archives for this year’s Founder’s Gala. A script that felt oddly dated yet disturbingly relevant: a girl, locked in a room by an elite institution, unravels her past through hallucinations. Very deep. Very Cyprian’s.

While refocusing a spotlight, Mira spotted something strange wedged behind a beam—a book, red and leather-bound, its spine cracked. She pried it loose and tucked it into her canvas bag without opening it.

That night, in the cramped dorm room she shared with two other scholarship girls, Mira finally flipped through it. It was a script—handwritten, angry. The Red Room, but not the version they were rehearsing. This one was darker, more fractured. There were no clean arcs or catharses. The girl didn’t just hallucinate; she fought back. Margins were scrawled with annotations like: "They want blood, but only if it’s poetic."

At the bottom of the last page, smudged but legible, a name: Anjali Mehra.

A week into rehearsals, Mira changed one of Cassia’s lines. Subtle. A single verb. Enough to throw her. Cassia stuttered, then improvised. The teacher raised an eyebrow. Mira pretended to be confused. That night, she found new writing in the red book: "The understudy waits in the wings, her hands full of knives." Her name appeared beneath it, circled in black ink that hadn’t been there before.

She tried another change. This time, Cassia missed a cue entirely, walking towards the wings at the wrong time and tripping over an innocuous wire. She sprained her wrist. Quietly - in a manner that an outsider could have easily mistaken for her usual meekness unless they knew better - Mira quietly suggested she could fill in. “Just to read the lines, miss, just to keep the rhythm.” The director hesitated, then relented. "Just until Cassia’s wrist heals."

Each night, the book transformed. Scenes rewrote themselves. Mira cross-checked, breath catching as the cast followed these unseen edits like puppets. It wasn't just her sabotage anymore. The script was alive. And the school—so eager to perform brilliance for trustees and donors—never questioned the changes.

Mira's performance improved with each rehearsal. The teachers, who once told her to "focus on tech," now murmured things like "raw talent" and "discovery of the season." She glowed under the lights. But Cassia grew quiet. Not defeated. Watchful.

One evening, she pulled Mira aside. Her voice had lost its sweetness. “What are you doing?”

Mira looked at her. “Becoming.”

Cassia scoffed. “You think they’ll keep you? They’ll use you for their next brochure and drop you when your accent cracks.”

Mira didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.

The night before opening, Mira returned to the archives. She found an old programme from 1976. Tucked inside: a sepia photo of a girl onstage, mouth open mid-monologue. Anjali Mehra. Notes scribbled below: "Expelled. Disrupted rehearsal. Violated performance protocol." A ghost of a girl, edited out of legacy.

Opening night arrived. The theatre shimmered under warm lights. Alumni, trustees, foreign guests. The principal gave a speech about honour and history. Mira stood in the wings, dressed in the lead's final costume—a blood-red anarkali. The red book was inside her coat pocket, pulsing against her hip like a second heart.

The play began. Lines shifted. Mira said things she'd never rehearsed. The other actors responded with eerie fluidity. No one blinked. As if the script lived in their bodies now.

In Act III, as Mira took her mark stage left, Cassia appeared. Pale, shaking.

“You can’t finish it,” she whispered. “The play doesn’t want you. It wants memory. Blood. Sacrifice. It chose me.”

Before Mira could answer, a spotlight crashed down, shattering near Cassia’s feet. Smoke billowed. When it cleared, Cassia was gone.

No one stopped the play.

Mira continued. The final monologue poured from her like prophecy:

"They locked me in red to quiet my rage. But even velvet bleeds when bitten. You’ll forget me, but I will haunt every curtain, every cue. I will write myself into your bones."

The audience erupted. Standing ovation. The headmaster wept. Backstage, no one mentioned Cassia. Her name was missing from the cast list. Her costume had vanished. Her locker stood open and empty.

Mira said nothing.

Weeks passed. Articles named her the future of Indian theatre. "Scholarship star becomes breakout sensation." She posed for photos beside Lady Vernon’s portrait.

The red book still lived on her shelf. Every night, it grew heavier. A new line appeared: "The understudy never leaves. She performs forever."

She tried to burn it. The flame danced, but the paper did not catch.

One morning, in the mirror, Mira's reflection moved a breath behind her. It smiled before she did.

She was no longer becoming. She had become.

The curtains never closed.