Futuristic India · sample world · illustrated preview, not generated
Monsoon Protocol
Hyderabad, 2041. Every monsoon, the rain takes one memory from everyone it touches — a face, a phone number, the way home. The city has learned to live with it: paper ledgers, umbrella laws, a rain forecast measured in forgetting. Ira Vemula, a university student who writes everything down, notices that this year the city itself is forgetting something, and follows the water down to find out what.
Episode 1 · storyboard read-through
The Ninth Rain
The rain takes Ira from her best friend's memory — and shows her something the city has lost.
Hand-drawn storyboard, not a generated film. The rendered episode appears here once it is made.
The ninth rain of the season.
Shot 1 of 8 — Wide shot: the elevated Rain Line metro at night over Hyderabad, forecast boards glowing orange, monsoon clouds rolling in.
Characters
- Illustration · not generated
Ira Vemula
Main character — a student who refuses to forget
Stubborn, funny under pressure, quietly afraid of being forgotten.
How they look
20, slight build, sharp brown eyes, a short black bob with one streak dyed teal, warm brown skin; an oversized mustard-yellow raincoat over a grey kurta and jeans, canvas sneakers, a cross-body satchel stuffed with paper notebooks, ink stains on her fingers.
- Illustration · not generated
Saleem Bhai
Old Irani café owner who never walks in the rain
Gentle, theatrical, keeps secrets for people.
How they look
64, tall and stooped, a neat white beard, thick-framed spectacles on a cord, a cream kurta with a brown sleeveless jacket and a pen in every pocket; always behind the counter of his Irani café.
- Illustration · not generated
Kavya Reddy
Ira's roommate, who forgets her
Loud, warm, fearless.
How they look
21, tall, long curly hair tied up with a pencil, round face, a bright red hoodie over a college lanyard, silver hoop earrings.
Places
The Ninth Stepwell
A forgotten stone baoli under the Old City where rainwater collects and glows faintly with other people's memories.
Saleem's Irani Café
A narrow Old City café of marble tables, bentwood chairs and floor-to-ceiling paper ledgers, lit by one yellow bulb.
The Rain Line
An elevated metro line above the city where the rain-forecast boards count down to the next forgetting.
The rules
- 1Monsoon rain on bare skin erases one memory — the one the person was thinking of. Umbrellas slow it; nothing stops it.
- 2Erased memories run downhill with the water and pool in the city's old stepwells, where they can be seen but not easily taken back.
- 3Ink on paper survives the rain. Anything only stored on screens is forgotten along with the people who made it.
Relationships
- Ira and Kavya were best friends until the ninth rain; now Kavya treats Ira as a polite stranger.
- Saleem Bhai knew Ira's grandmother, and keeps a ledger with Ira's name in it.
Still unanswered
- Who is draining the stepwells, and what do they want the city to forget?
- What is the memory that belongs to Hyderabad itself?