Summary
“The Ghost of Sultanpore” gives us a glimpse at the origins of Fakeer as Sam struggles with what she witnessed.
This recap of Typewriter Season 1, Episode 3, “The Ghost of Sultanpore”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
In a change of pace, Typewriter Episode 3 doesn’t open with shocks and scares. Instead, we visit Sultanpore in a flashback to the 50s, in which a sickly old man requests the help of a local woman to euthanize him before his scavenging sons can change his will. The woman has powers; she stops his heart just by brushing his chest, similar to what we have seen Dark Jenny do to both Maria and James in the previous episode. She also travels with her young son, who wants to learn these powers for himself. As she explains to him, they can be used for good or ill, and she’ll only teach him when he’s old enough to know the difference. As yet, it’s unclear exactly what relation these events in “The Ghost of Sultanpore” have to the what else is going on in Typewriter Season 1, Episode 3.
But the shocks aren’t far behind. In a follow-up dream sequence in the present day, Sameera imagines Jenny pinning her against the wall and pulling out her still-beating heart. At the Bardez Villa, Jenny reads about James’s death, just as Ravi is seeing his body at the morgue. The events of the previous episode are reverberating throughout Typewriter Episode 3; witnesses at Maria’s funeral service suggest that Jenny was the last person James spoke to, giving the police a new lead.
Back in the past, the healing woman is accosted by the greedy sons of the man she helped die. Apparently, his will now states that everything he has must go to her. The sons demand she is arrested and executed, but the will was changed prior to the man’s death and officially notarized. There’s no legal case here, but something tells me the matter won’t be left alone.
Meanwhile in “The Ghost of Sultanpore”, Amit Roy is teaching the Ghost Club about infinity — naturally, the topic of ghosts comes up, but he’s able to keep a straight face. Sameera presents him with a forged doctor’s letter in order to get time off, and she uses it to visit Jenny at the Bardez Villa. In a bizarre development, Sam tells her that she witnessed James’s murder. She also explains how it correlates with what happens in The Ghost of Sultanpore, right down to the idea of doppelgangers and such. Naturally, Jenny doesn’t believe it. Sam insists she’ll keep it quiet just so long as Jenny uses her status as a ghost to help her contact her dead mother. There is, to put things mildly, something of a disagreement about this.
Jenny visits Ravi at the station — right in the middle of him explaining how she’s the prime suspect in the killings and admonishing his men for suggesting he fancies her — to inform him of Sam’s visit. There’s some more tonal whiplash here; Typewriter Season 1, Episode 3, like the installments before it, enjoys the idea propagated by a lot of Indian media that the local police are pretty cartoonishly inept. But Ravi is somewhat apart from that, which is what makes him something of a compelling figure, even if he’s the only one at the department who seems capable.
“The Ghost of Sultanpore” returns to the past, where the healer woman’s son is accosted by the aggrieved locals and tortured by them — they carve “Fakeer” into his arm, and with that, the relevance of these flashback sequences is starting to come together. Back in the present, Sam goes to the boathouse but is ambushed by Moses. Ravi intervenes, but she claims that he’s a friend and she was just dropping off a book for him. You can guess which book. In a nice bonding moment, Sam explains what she believes to be the truth to him about Jenny and the ghost and James’s death. He doesn’t believe her — how can he? — but he takes the information in; another reason why Ravi works as a character.
Peter’s deviousness catches up with him in Typewriter Episode 3. While he can gather most of the money, his hot-stuff blackmailer wants the full amount and an “apology” on top. Since he has been blowing off Jenny’s calls, she turns up at his work to speak with him instead and catches him negotiating this in the car.
Back in the past, the men attack the young boy, Bali, and his mother again when she challenges them about carving Fakeer into his arm. Rightly fed up with it, she uses her powers to squeeze one of the men’s hearts, just like how Dark Jenny handles business. In fear of reprisal, Bali and his mother prepare to leave, but reprisal arrives too quickly. The villagers set their house alight. Realizing she cannot survive, Bali’s mother tells him that she tried to do good, but that evil always triumphs; she tells him to build an army and wreak havoc on the Earth, wrapping him in a blanket and allowing him to escape through a window. After, she steps outside and is shot dead, and “The Ghost of Sultanpore” ends.
