Raman watches from the back row. He sees his daughter—his shy, bookish daughter—stand in a shaft of light and speak without speaking. She is good. Better than good. She has the thing that cannot be taught: stillness. The camera loves her the way the moon loves a still pond.

“To escape.”

When the shoot ends, Mohan thanks everyone. He has no money to pay them, only a promise: “I will take this to the film institute in Pune. Someone will notice.”

She looks at the tickets. Then at him. Then she smiles—a small, crooked thing, like a half-remembered song. They walk to the theatre through the rain. No umbrella. The streetlights paint everything yellow. Raman holds his daughter’s elbow, the way he held her when she was five and afraid of the dark.

He is quiet for a long time. Then: “Because the cinema is not real. But the world outside—your exams, your future—that is the only screen that matters.”

Inside, the film has already started. They find their seats in the back row. On screen, a hero is singing a song by the backwaters. The lyric goes: “Manju peythu thudangi, kaattu ninnu thudangi…” (The mist began to fall, the wind began to pause…)

Raman pulls him aside. “You will not use her name.”