The Spark of a Beautiful Boy

The story opens with a painting of Michelangelo; the finger of David and Jesus.

An aspiring filmmaker, Ishaan, was struggling to find his voice in filmmaking in a new city, along with a struggling love life. He and his girlfriend, Darathie, met after a long month near his rent room; it turned out worse. Even on the public bus, they were not allowed to sit together by the rule of gender rights. While coming back to his room, he encountered two people; the house owner asking for the due, and a mad woman making no sense. Later that night, Ishaan discovered two things in his room- the luggage Darathie left in his room and an unknown classic key. Curiosity got its best and Ishaan could not resist but open the luggage. There he discovered Darathie’s passport and visa to Sweden and her life journal. There awaited the moment of reflection, the decision of the future. To be precise, a colossal disaster.

The next day when Darathie went to meet him, she saw Ishaan in her outfit, her mere imagination jotted on her journal. It shattered her last hope, but mastering the courage, she decided to tag along with him. She had to fight with the bus conductor to not see Ishaan as a trans-beggar but as a common passenger. They sat together, but the distance was even further. There she decided to end the relationship, after dropping him home. Was it a home?

Ishaan found himself in the creation of a story that night, as well as horrifying voices from the washroom. Just like a mature person, how he’d treated the fear?- by ignoring it. For the rest part of the story, he would never enter the toilet without a cigarette.

As the house owner figured out Ishaan’s act on the last day, he held nothing back but eluded Ishaan by vandalising his room’s goods along with the laptop. He sat outside with his belongings until his best friend Ratul came to the rescue.

On the way, Ratul told him about the madwoman, they encountered, and how she turned out like that after her tragic loss of husband and son in an accident just right before her eyes.
***

Moving into a new room didn’t change his fate, nor did his obsession with Darathie. But he had to take charge of his life, so he started with small- decorating his new home. The second part began, but his avoidance of using the washroom without a cigarette seemed constant.

On the night of Ratul's retirement party, Ishaan was cleaning and his finger got a cut. He hurried back to the washroom and started to clean it. Then he realised, he had no cigarette left. The washroom started to haunt him. When he was about to leave, someone pulled him back to the dark.
The darkness revealed the murder of the madwoman in the hand of the house owner, as his feminine insanity by toxic masculinity. Then he had a confrontation with his younger self, 10-year-old Ishaan, and Darathie. There unfolded an intense drama, Ishaan’s hidden feelings for Darathie, his childhood fear, left with a choice of killing himself or killing his childhood. They left the decision to their fate and agreed upon the infamous masculine urge; that is Russian Roulette. But older Ishaan tricked the game, which he won eventually, and managed to save both of them; saying, “Either I’ll win this, or die suffering. But I intend to live and you are living with me.”

Later that night, Ishaan had to take Ratul’s friend Reema to his room for a space issue. They built a genuine connection along the way and she asked him about the script he was working on. Rather than telling the script, Ishaan started to talk about his childhood, when he and his sister were an inseparable force, used to wear his sister’s clothes, then had to move away from her due to schooling; and how an environment in school differentiate him from his sister and how cruel he had become along the way towards her.

Reema couldn’t say anything, nor did Ishaan stay in his room. But Reema left an address and a note for him. Later we see, that he used the note as a dialogue for his film where he and his sister were having a scene. After Cut, he had a confrontation with the director. He received a stunning insight into his biography from the director which left him speechless. Then he followed the address, but the address led to none. Only a gym. He figured out that the gym was none other than the key he discovered in his last room. He went for the locker key holds, and found two vases of cremated ash.

He carried out the ritual of salvation from death. On his way home, he saw that the madwoman was dead and the house owner was being arrested. Maybe that was a way of peace for both of them and inside of his heart. Then he visited the cafeteria and finally had the courage to speak his voice. In that same cafe, there was an eminent personality of the Assamese film industry.

In the next dawn, he jogged to the top of the hill as if searching for the spark. As he reached the top, he saw his younger self sitting beside him. This time he was wearing a girl’s attire. Ishaan’s tears fell from his eyes. Young Ishaan saw him and forwarded his index finger; old Ishaan composed himself and forwarded his finger to the tip of his finger, like Michelangelo's painting, just like the first frame of the movie. And the sun has finally risen.