NOISE

LOGLINE: A young girl suspects her new neighbor of kidnapping a child, when she hears the child’s voice through the walls, but the neighbor claims he lives alone.  

22-year-old RIYA (24) lives with her mother in a lower middle-class building, where the rooms are small, the paint is peeling, and the walls are thin, where you can hear the neighbors talking. Riya’s neighbors are tenants of the building owner Mr. Sampat. The neighbors are leaving the next day, as they have bought a new flat. Riya is happy to see them go as she thought their children were too noisy. Her mother says you have problem with whoever came to live in the flat.  

Riya is a working girl, and every day as she walks to the bus stand, an eve-teaser teases her. Riya is furious but ignores him. When she comes home a talkative aunty accosts her in the staircase and tells her that a new tenant has moved to her next door flat. Riya looks disappointed. She asks the aunty who is it? Do they have children? The aunty says she doesn’t know. Riya comes home and through the walls she can hear furniture being dragged around. She looks frustrated, and decides to confront the new neighbors. The following morning, she is about to ring the bell, then hesitates. She goes back home and scribbles a note. She comes back outside the neighbor’s flat and tries to push the note under the door. She is startled when the note is suddenly snatched inside from under the door. Riya flees back home, all freaked out. She is surprised to see her mother making kothimbirwadi for the new neighbors in order to welcome them. Riya tries to warn her mother that something not right about the new neighbors but her mother says ‘you are suspicious about everyone’. She forces Riya to accompany her to welcome the new neighbors. Mother and daughter go and ring the doorbell. Riya watches apprehensively as the door slowly opens and AMAN (27) half shows his face. He asks what do they want. Riya’s mother says ‘I have made kothimbirwadi to welcome you to the building.’ He says he doesn’t want it, and shuts the door on their faces. Mother and daughter are stunned. Riya tells her mother that I told you something not right about the neighbors. Her mother says he must me a bachelor and an introvert, not wanting to mix with others.  

That night, however, Riya hears a child’s voice through her bedroom wall. She calls her mother to her room, and both hear the child talk- ‘Aman, mujhe koi kahani sunaao.’ Riya and her mother are stunned that not only there is a child in that house, but the child was addressing Aman by his name. The next morning from her balcony, Riya sees Aman leaving for work. She quickly goes into the corridor and puts her ear against Aman’s door, trying to hear if the child was inside. Suddenly Aman returns, and is furious. Riya is flustered and pretends that she had dropped something there and was picking it up. She bolts into her house. 

That night they hear the child again, but this time the child seems to be in some sort of distress. Riya cannot take it anymore and she decides to confront him. She goes and rings the doorbell, and pretends to get information about the child, saying that you and your child are talking too loudly. She is shocked when he says ‘There is no child. I live here alone.’ Riya comes home and tells her mother that she suspects that the tenant is a kidnapper and has held the child hostage. She is firm that she would do something about it. The next morning Riya meets the building owner, Mr. Sampat, and apprises him of the situation. He first rubbishes her claim, but she threatens that she would go to the police, and if Aman is really a child-kidnapper even Mr. Sampat would get into trouble. Mr. Sampat then gets his keys to Aman’s flat and is about to open the door, when Aman who had been suspicious all along, and was watching them from the staircase, comes and confronts them. He threatens to call the police on them, for breaking into his house. Riya tells him, ‘Yes, call the police because I know that you are hiding a child in there.’ Aman then calls them inside and asks them to search the house. Riya and Mr. Sampat search the entire premises but they find no trace of the child. Sampat is apologetic, but Riya is still suspicious. Aman tells both to get out. Later when Aman leaves for office, Riya stealthily follows him, but soon loses sight of him. We see Aman, who knew she was following him, watching her covertly from behind a pillar.  

That night as Riya returns home, she sees the door of Aman’s door slightly ajar. Gathering courage, Riya sneaks inside the house. It is completely dark. Suddenly a table lamp is switched on and Aman is sitting there, watching her. But what freaks out Riya, that she hears Aman’s voice coming from another direction, in the dark. Terrified, she slowly turns in that direction, and is taken aback to see a boy doll. Aman then reveals that he does ventriloquism as a hobby, and that the doll is a ventriloquist doll. He calls the doll Timmy. Riya is mortified. The next morning, she tries to make amends by baking him a cake in which she has written ‘Sorry. Please forgive me.’ She keeps the box outside his door, and rings the doorbell and hides. She watches covertly as Aman opens the door and picks up the box unsmilingly. A little later he brings back the box, but when Riya uncovers the lid, she is surprised to find another cake in it, on which the words, ‘You are forgiven,’ is written. Riya is relieved. She and Aman become friends and he often visits their home, and becomes a favorite of Riya’s mother. Now every night ‘Timmy’ and Aman entertain Riya with his funny jokes, through the bedroom wall. Riya tells Aman that he is a very good ventriloquist, and he should take it up professionally. Aman is enthused by her words, and soon lands up a small gig, for the following week. Before that, one day, Aman sees the eve teaser harassing Riya. He goes and confronts the guy. The guy backs off. Riya is impressed and thanks him with a slight peck on his cheek, which Aman misinterprets as love. He goes for his show, where he builds his entire performance around his love for Riya. He returns home, with flowers for Riya, and finds her in the terrace. He says the flowers are for her, for encouraging him.

She is taken aback when he kisses her. She is furious and slaps him, berating him for misinterpreting her innocent kiss for something else. Aman is furious but hides his anger. He tries to make amends by calling her up, baking a cake, apologizing through Timmy, through the walls. But to no avail. Aman is frustrated. One morning Riya’s mother leaves for a wedding for a week. He helps her load the luggage in the taxi, and after she leaves, he tries talking to Riya but she rebuffs. Aman is frustrated and at that moment he sees the eve-teaser. And his fury knows no bounds. That night, it is raining hard, and the eve-teaser is walking home when he is lured by a voice in the darkness. The eve-teaser walks towards the voice, and suddenly falls into a man-hole, and is swept away. Aman comes and peeps into the manhole viciously where he can hear the man’s dying cries. He comes home. Riya comes from work and is dismayed to see that she had forgotten her house keys. In resignation she knocks on Aman’s door, to ask for her spare house keys. Aman maliciously invites her inside but she refuses. The next morning, she goes to return the keys, but Aman says there is no point keeping it, as he is vacating the flat the next day. Riya is now chagrined that he is leaving because of her. She reconciles with him, and asks him to stay back, but he is adamant on leaving. That night, we show his mind completely unraveling as he talks to Timmy directly like a mental person. Timmy ‘says’ that Aman murdered a man, and that he would tell Riya. Aman tries to strangle Timmy. Riya comes home from work, and is getting ready for bed, when she hears Timmy’s voice, through the wall. He says he needs to tell her something. Riya, however is too tired, and tells Timmy that she would hear him in the morning. So, Timmy says goodnight. But then we see that Timmy isn’t being operated by Aman at all. The doll is all alone. Aman’s voice is coming from somewhere else; from under Riya’s bed, where he was waiting for her to come home! With a malicious smile he holds up the copy of the spare keys of Riya’s house, that he had got made. An innocent, unsuspecting Riya shuts off the night lamp. The room goes dark.