While editing this week’s dispatch, I found a gap in my research for the topic I was broaching. So, in the spirit of releasing an edition every Sunday, I leave you this short story I wrote for a Times Of India contest submission a few weeks back. Feel free to leave any kind of feedback or critique!
This story is set in Istanbul, and the main protagonist is a student called Eshan. Contest participants were given a prompt, but hopefully it has blended with this story well enough to not stick out.
(artwork credit: Olivia Linn)
As the taxi turned into Çınarlı Bostan Sokak, Eshan let out a quiet sigh. It was just another street, but the only place in the city where he truly felt at peace. Few streets were as devoid of activity as this one. In the six months since his move to Istanbul, he had come here many times, but this combination of a dark sky, pin-drop silence and soft street lights took his breath away every time.
“That’ll be it. Thank you,” Eshan said to the driver as he reached the first block of buildings. He got off the taxi, and on his way into the lobby of a skyrise, stopped and marvelled at the deserted road once more as if it was a painting.
Camila was waiting for him outside her apartment on the eleventh floor. “Hi, Camila. Thanks for meeting me,” Eshan said with a half-smile.
Camila was Eshan’s therapist, and one of the few people he could trust with his thoughts. Her way of listening, her calming silence, gave him the comfort of organising his feelings. There was no judgement, no preaching, just an acknowledgement that nothing about his vulnerabilities was abnormal.
This session turned out to be similar. Eshan spoke about his loneliness; Camila, like always, barely uttered a sound while he spoke. Knowing that Eshan needed a pat on his head rather than a lecture, she softly nodded whenever he looked at her for validation. As he was leaving, Camila told him something she often had before, “Don’t worry, Eshan. You are great and don’t have to try too hard.”
Eshan checked his watch as he stood in front of the retinal scanner on his door. 1 am. He calculated a maximum of six hours of sleep before he had to get up for college. He opened his phone to check for unread messages and found an SMS. “Who even sends a text these days? Just use email or SecureText!”, he grumbled. A quick, indifferent response later, he kept his phone away. The next morning was Results Day for the first semester and he was excited.
Eshan did better in his exams than he had thought - he topped his batch with a GPA of 9.3. But at the class report-card distribution, barely any of his classmates seemed to notice him. He looked around, seeking a congratulatory message, a high-five, but found nothing. As he turned to leave, he heard a voice directed at him. “Hey man, well done! How do you even get a 99 in AI?!”
“Nathan! Thank you so much.” Eshan was genuinely thankful, but his smile bore more self-pity than gratitude. Nathan patted him on the shoulder and walked over to a group of friends who were waiting for him. Eshan often attributed Nathan’s popularity to his culture — more than three-quarters of the class belonged to Israeli families — but he knew Nathan was also intelligent, sharp, and exceptional at sports. On his way out, Eshan heard a faint “See you after the vacations” that sounded like it was meant for him, but he couldn’t be sure.
Eshan spent much of his vacation grasping at skills which could improve his chances of grabbing some eyeballs. Sports wasn’t an option since he neither had the interest nor the ability to stake a claim for the university teams. He was good at chess, but he realised that chess was as likely to get him attention as his stamp collection from the Soviet Era. He tried opening a conversation about the latter this one time, and was swiftly swatted away with “Erm..who cares about stamps?” So he tried his hand at electronic music production and digital painting, and neither yielded quick results.
Disappointed at his lack of any presentable talent, he would often slump to his bed and play a random episode of Seinfeld. That show, made during a bygone era when stamps, Soviets, and chess were in vogue, acted on him like a balm and energiser at once. On bad days, he resorted to episodes that had a lot of Kramer and George. He often cracked up at Kramer’s clumsiness and George’s bouts of frustrated anger. On good days, he appreciated the layered humour during the opening sequences, where the lead character - Jerry Seinfeld himself - performed a short stand-up comedy routine.
One day, probed by Camila to think of things that made him happy, he instinctively replied - “Computers and Seinfeld.” She asked him about the show to find something that might lead to a tangible inspiration. Every time the discussion veered towards what pulled him to the show, Eshan spoke about the lead character Jerry Seinfeld and how he would like to be able to talk like him and have his confidence and popularity.
“Have you thought of trying stand-up comedy?”, Camila asked Eshan. “Ooooh, of course! I want to be funny. Stand-up comics are funny. Yes!” Eshan’s smile was now as wide as the room and that warmed Camila’s heart. He decided to perform at the monthly open-mic night once college resumed. Although she wanted to warn him about the effort this craft, like any other art-form, would take, she let it pass that evening. Eshan had deserved this moment of happiness and discovery and she would be the last person to rain on his parade.
On the first day of the second semester, he entered his classroom in a chipper mood. Nathan, as usual, was the first to greet him.
“Eshan! Great to see you bro! Missed you at Sarah’s party. We got so dr..”
“Sarah’s party?”, Eshan interrupted, his spirit visibly flattening.
“...okay, never mind. How’ve you been? I hear we have a good-looking professor for Data Science,” Nathan responded, having realised that Eshan was probably not invited.
“Uhh, yeah. I guess.”
During one of the breaks, Eshan asked Nathan about the open-mic night. Nathan was quick to help. “Meet Dr. Ilhan in Block B. Dude probably sits on the first floor. I remember seeing him a few times at those events.” Upon reaching Block B, Eshan found out that Dr. Ilhan won’t return to campus for another week. Over the next few days, Eshan’s excitement and impatience grew in equal amounts.
Apart from the open-mic, there was also the small matter of university approval for his scholarship. His report card from the first semester held him in good stead, but Eshan was nothing if not anxious. One Friday afternoon, as he was leaving for home, Eshan received a mail on his student id with the subject - “Scholarship grant approved”. Within a few seconds, his mind started racing.
Realising there is very little time left before everyone disperses to their joyous weekends, Eshan sought out Nathan and told him about the approval. Nathan hugged him tightly, “Well done! Let’s party!”
“Of course. Tomorrow evening? 8 pm? Let me find the others,” Eshan said hurriedly, when Nathan stopped him. “Why don’t you just email all of them on the class id?”
On Saturday, Eshan had been up until 4 am setting up a playlist. Yet, by noon, he had ordered the snacks, cleaned the house, and sent WhatsApp reminders to his classmates. As the hours went by, a few of them began sending in apologies for not being able to make it for the party.
Around six that evening, when the doorbell rang, Eshan was busy getting things ready for the evening's party. Wondering who had turned up so early, he grumpily went to the door. It was Nathan. “I'm here to help you,” he said with a smile. “How much can you possibly do all by yourself.” Holding forward a single rose that had a long, slender stalk, he bowed dramatically. “Congratulations. For now, you could stop being jealous,” he sneered. Eshan knew that the emphatic 'all by yourself' was hardly intentional, but it bothered him.
Apart from Nathan, only two others turned up for Eshan’s party. Nathan put Robert Glasper’s latest album on the music system and sought out Eshan to lift his mood. “You really went to town with this one, eh? Oh, and great food, man. Didn’t know you cook!” At the end of the night, after seeing Nathan and the others off, Eshan’s sadness gave way to determination for making a success out of his open-mic stand-up performance.
The next week came with a cooler breeze. Dr. Ilhan was back on campus; and the open-mic night was in two weeks. Time passed Eshan by like a gust of wind. He attended all lectures, but mostly absent-minded. While taking down notes on Random Forest Algorithm, he thought of Jerry Seinfeld messing up one of his routines because his pilot was in the audience, and chuckled.
On the day before the open-mic, Eshan even contemplated bunking his lectures. Suddenly, his phone beeped with a notification - “Heart-rate too high. Sit down and hydrate.” He checked his FitTrackr smartwatch. It read 150. “Okay, calm down,” he mumbled and took a few deep breaths. Eshan had coded a script into his FitTrackr which sent a notification whenever his heart-rate rose beyond a level. He first did it as a nudge for his anxiety; he was now using it to contain his excitement.
Eshan could barely sleep that night, and the next evening, went for his performance in a state of tiredness mixed with excitement. Even though the show was scheduled to start at 7:30 pm, Eshan reached the campus around 4:15 and parked himself at the auditorium. Every passing second was beginning to feel like a minute.
By 6 pm, Eshan’s crisp, new shirt was dripping with sweat. He walked out of the auditorium and washed his face before going straight back in; but this time found an air-conditioner vent to stand under.
By 7 pm, students had started shuffling into the auditorium. Eshan saw Nathan and a bunch of his other classmates walk in. The next few minutes were a blur, a passage of time that barely registered with him. He was jolted back to senses when someone ran up to him and said - “Eshan, you’re next!”
Eshan took stage, but with blurred vision, drenched in sweat, unable to walk in his normal gait. He felt he heard some claps but wasn’t sure. As he stretched every possible sinew to grab the mic, his FitTrackr started beeping in a shrill, loud tone.
An old-looking man came from behind the stage and held Eshan. “Son, you are shaking. Please come with me to the medical ward.” Eshan was in no position to refuse. Almost in a trance, he followed along. In a few minutes, Eshan’s vision started coming back to normal. He checked his watch. The time was 8 pm; his heart-rate was 170. He opened his FitTrackr app and saw the average from the last hour - 185.
Eshan took the prescribed medicines from the campus pharmacy and went home. That night, he curled himself into a ball and sobbed like a child. A golden chance for making a mark had lacerated into a naked display of nervousness and anxiety. He booked and then promptly cancelled a session with Camila.
Eshan skipped college the next Monday. He didn’t know how to face his batchmates. He had no doubt that they would be laughing at him behind his back. When he finally gathered himself and went to class after a few days, Nathan gave him a quiet pat, someone else tried to cheer him up, but Eshan was morose and barely responded. The only thing from that day that registered with Eshan was a conversation about some theatre play that the University was producing.
By the next few days, Eshan could tell that the play was important. Even some professors would mention it in passing. A few of his batchmates were participating too. Responsibilities for composing the background score were given to a prodigiously talented pianist from senior year, who was also friends with Nathan. Lectures started getting cancelled because everyone wanted to be in the periphery of the production team, seeking opportunities to be involved.
And then, one day, Nathan came with bad news. Robert, the pianist who was working on the production, had met with an accident. There was a surge of tension that went through the entire class and the university. Istanbul University had a reputation for focusing equally on academics and extra-curricular skills. Sports teams had regular training sessions; the music and dramatics clubs got together once every week; the Art Wing was always teeming with people, even on holidays. The University was renowned as a finishing school both for great programmers and artists. Robert’s accident had jeopardised their grand annual production.
After the day’s lectures were over, Eshan walked up to Nathan and asked for Robert’s phone number. That week, Eshan went and met Robert at the hospital. There was none of the apprehension that usually defined Eshan’s interactions. After inquiring about his health, Eshan asked Robert about the music he was writing for the play. “I was almost done. I just needed to finish the last movement,” Robert replied with a sullen face. “You mind if I attempt something with it?”, Eshan asked, half expecting Robert to flatly refuse the request. On the contrary, Robert’s face lit up. “Go ahead! My bag is inside the cupboard here. Grab the black folder inside.”
During the previous mid-term holidays, while meddling with music production, Eshan had developed this idea of music as a form of Applied Mathematics. He couldn’t differentiate between F-sharp and B-flat, but he saw sheet music as patterns laid out on paper; he could tell when an instrument repeated a phrase during a song. He was curious to see if he could use that theory for Robert’s composition. Over the next week, Eshan spent many hours shuffling between Robert’s folder and his audio software.
A few days later, with just a fortnight to go for the live show, Eshan went over to Dr. Ilhan with a pitch to take over Robert’s duties. Dr. Ilhan had known him from before, so decided to humour him. “Do you even know how to play the piano?”, he asked. “Not quite,” Eshan quipped, “but I know how to programme it”. He saw the Doctor bend forward in intrigue, so he went on. “I have an idea about the kind of patterns that go into writing music.”
After a couple of seconds’ pause, he continued with the confidence of a seasoned storyteller - “And one more thing. Everyone wears a smartwatch, and the auditorium has a bluetooth receptor, right? I know how to code automations for my FitTrackr. I think I can automate the timbre of the piece based on the heart-rate of the audience. We can make them feel like they are actually in the play.” Dr. Ilhan gave Eshan a week to submit the first cut and test it during a rehearsal.
Throughout that week, Eshan worked as if he was possessed, mostly because he had to use his knack for mathematics and programming to cover for his lack of technical knowledge in music. He even read a few chapters from Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia to understand how music works with the brain.
On rehearsal day, Eshan came prepared. So far, the actors had been playing to a suite of tracks by the 19th-century composer Gustav Holst. He knew that Dr. Ilhan wouldn’t risk the production if there was even the slightest thing wrong with his presentation. The rehearsal went exactly as planned. Dr. Ilhan was impressed by how visceral the music suddenly felt. “Wow, Eshan. Can you get it ready for Saturday?”, he asked. “Of course,” Eshan replied confidently. They agreed on using his first cut for the rest of the rehearsals.
On the day of the production, Eshan reached the auditorium four hours in advance. He wanted to work without distractions and have everything in place before the organising committee started coming in. In a couple of hours, Dr. Ilhan joined him inside the control room. Eshan had also invited Robert to the control room, to watch from a vantage point as his composition pierced into the heart of everyone in the audience.
From the overture at the start to the crescendo, the production was as close to perfection as anyone could’ve imagined. The actors emoted with their bodies what words couldn’t; the narrators chose pauses and enunciations with expertise; and the background music and lighting was immaculate, as if tied to the pulse of the audience. Because it was. The console inside the control room was handling every minute aspect. Behind the console, like a scientist watching his experiment come to fruition, stood a beaming Eshan.
The only sound that came from the audience during the evening was the raucous applause after the curtains fell and the credit roll appeared on the screen. The composer credits read Robert Illingworth — Eshan had insisted on it — but the lights & sound section had Eshan’s name.
After the show, Eshan stood outside the auditorium gates and watched a horde of people leave with moist eyes, some with tears still running down their faces. Nathan came and grabbed him from behind. He wasn’t surprised to see Nathan followed by a beeline of his classmates, but this time, everyone wanted to talk to him. After receiving the compliments, Eshan quipped “Guys, party at mine tomorrow? 7 pm?” The response was a resounding, choral “YES!”. He exchanged high-fives with everyone as he set off for home.
At the party the next day, Eshan was the centre of every conversation. Everyone wanted to ask him how he managed to touch so many people emotionally through a piece of code. This attention should’ve taken him to the moon, but instead, he was tense and preoccupied throughout the evening. His phone kept beeping and he kept going to his room upstairs. Nathan noticed and checked with Eshan if everything was alright. “..uhh yeah. Don’t worry, thanks,” Eshan replied, although hurriedly. He seemed to relax only late into the evening, and was his usual courteous self while seeing everyone off.
***
The next morning, Nathan was woken up by a string of text messages from Eshan asking him to check his email. Taken by surprise, Nathan opened his email to find a message titled “URGENT.” His heart sank as he opened it.
There were three sentences in the email, each separated by a paragraph break. The first read - “If you’re reading this, I am probably dead. This isn’t a prank. I have attached my FitTrackr’s geo-tag. Find the police and use it to track me.” Mouth agape, tears forming in his eyes, Nathan read the second line. “Take my watch to the Israeli Consulate and ask their engineers to get inside the system folder.” The third line read - “I’m writing this to you because this directly concerns you and a lot of others in the class. And because you have been a great friend. Thank you.”
Nathan sat down on his bed and started sobbing. That sob soon turned into a cry, until the urgency of the situation hit him. He rushed out of his house towards the police station. He showed Eshan's email to the police, and using his geo-tag, they found his location. It was a swamp on the outskirts of Istanbul. A message was sent to the nearest police patrol to search the area; and within a few minutes, they received an affirmative response. Eshan’s body had been found. Nathan, completely overwhelmed by the developments of the last hour, started crying again in the car.
When Nathan reached the swamp, he noticed a cluster of policemen around a puddle. He walked over, still hoping that all this was some disgusting prank, until he saw Eshan lying expressionless. After they had retrieved his watch, a unit accompanied Nathan to the Israeli consulate.
The officer at the consulate immediately sent the watch to a room where cryptography experts sat amidst the percussive racket of clattering keyboards. Half an hour later, a pensive-looking man walked up to Nathan and the policemen. “Please come with me to the meeting room.” In that room, they were told things none of them was prepared for.
Eshan’s full name was Eshan Marwan. He was a Palestinian by birth but grew up in the US. Fifteen years back, his father had been killed in Gaza by a Mossad attack. Six months before he came to Istanbul, a group associated with the HAMAS got pictures of Eshan in the presence of a Palestinian criminal wanted by the FBI. He had no idea about that man’s background. They sent an email to Eshan with the photos, threatening to leak it to the FBI if he didn’t do exactly as they asked. They told him details of where he had been and whom he had met, and it was clear that they were tracking him. Eshan was then sent details of his mission, the scale of which he had never imagined. They also knew he had taken admission into the Istanbul University; and that a bunch of his batchmates came from a community of Israeli expatriates who had ties to the UN. Eshan’s task was to get them together in a room and poison them. They even sent over a kind of undetectable poison that would only start acting after 48 hours of being consumed, giving enough window to eliminate any gathering out of suspicion.
A sense of revenge and the fear of the FBI made him undertake this. At the party the night before, Eshan decided against it. He couldn’t get himself to kill people who he spent so much time around, who were all his age, and had very little to do with the bullet that had gone through his father’s skull. He anticipated the result of turning his back on something as lethal and well-connected as the HAMAS, and had programmed an automated email that would go out if his heart-rate ever flatlined.
Under this blanket of gloom, the officer-in-charge addressed the policemen and other consulate members - “Get in touch with the University and the Mossad.”