Julie Ganapathi 2003

Julie Ganapathi is a devoted fan of a popular television show, and over time she identifies closely with its central character. The author of Manga, Tenkasi Balakumaran, leaves his home to write the final episodes. On his way back, a car accident leaves him badly injured and disabled. Julie Ganapathi rescues Balakumaran and brings him to her home, where her intense fixation begins to reveal itself. She becomes emotionally unstable and fixated on the show’s hero, and she asks him to let her read the concluding scripts before they are published.

As Balakumaran works to finish the ending, Julie’s obsession deepens. She reads the drafts and finds the ending unsatisfactory, and she begins to pressure him to rewrite it by any means necessary, effectively turning his confinement into a personal siege. He discovers that she has kept his situation secret from everyone and has no plans to release him anytime soon. Desperate to escape, he attempts to break free, but she disables him, confining him to a locked room and preventing him from getting up.

A police inspector investigating Balakumaran’s disappearance arrives at Julie’s house, drawn by the public knowledge of her devotion to Manga. The investigation uncovers the truth: Balakumaran has indeed been kept there. In a tense moment, she confronts the inspector with a weapon, killing him, and ominously tells Balakumaran that they will die together. To buy time, he pretends to work on a new version of the final Manga script, completing it while devising a plan to arm himself. He uses that moment to lure Julie into procuring a weapon for him, and a violent struggle ends with him killing Julie and escaping.

The story closes with Balakumaran, now free, reunited with his family and speaking to the press about his harrowing ordeal. He describes how Julie’s intense fixation on Manga pushed the situation to its breaking point, yet he also frames her obsession as a dark source of inspiration that shaped his eventual fiction.