Raised Dots

Sunday arrives like a soft hand on the shoulder.

Not urgent. Not loud. Just present.

Priya wakes later than she has allowed herself all week. For a moment she doesn’t know what time it is—only that the cold has moved from sharp to merely insistent, and the house sounds different when nobody is rushing to catch something.

In the courtyard, Sunita is already working with the winter sun the way she works with everything else: making it useful.

A rope has been tied from the neem tree to the iron grill. Two sweaters hang from it, heavy and damp, shoulders drooping as if they’ve given up. Sunita flips them once with a quick, practiced snap.

“Uth gayi?” she calls—you’re up?—without turning around.

“Haan,” Priya answers—yes—and it comes out as a yawn.

Her phone is under her pillow like a guilty secret. She pulls it out and checks the screen.

No new message from the college portal. No SMS that says confirmed. The stamped receipt and acknowledgement are real, yes, sitting safely in her plastic folder above the trunk. But the mind likes a second stamp. A digital one.

On WhatsApp, Sana has sent a voice note, then immediately two stickers: one dancing cartoon, one that says Shabaash!—well done—so large it fills the screen.

Priya listens.

“Ab toh ho gaya na. Ab bas chill, okay? Ravivaar hai—Sunday.” It’s done now. Now just relax, okay? It’s Sunday.

Priya smiles at the word chill in Sana’s mouth, like she has ever successfully chilled in her life.

From the inner room, Arjun’s voice rises—half complaint, half announcement. “Mummy, where are my socks? The black ones.”

Sunita answers without missing her beat. “Wahi honge jahan tumne chhode the.” They’ll be where you left them.

“Woh toh main bhi jaanta hoon,” Arjun mutters. I know that too.

Priya pours water at the hand pump and splashes her face. The cold makes her fully awake, instantly and without permission.

Inside, the kettle is already on the stove. Today, Sunita has grated extra ginger into the chai. The smell lifts the whole kitchen by half a mood.

Rakesh is sitting on the charpai, not sleeping now, not leaving—just occupying his own Sunday in quiet pieces. He has the newspaper open, but his eyes move slowly, as if the letters are heavy.

He looks up when Priya enters. “Ho gaya sab?”—everything done?

Priya nods. “Ho gaya,” she says. Done.

That is enough. Her father does not need a detailed report; he needs the fact to sit somewhere in the house like a stable object.

Sunita sets down tea in front of him. Then, in front of Priya.

The steel tumbler warms her fingers. The first sip tastes like ginger and milk and the small luxury of not being in a queue.

Arjun wanders in, hair doing its own thing. He stares at Priya over the rim of his tumbler. “So your form is done-done?”

Priya makes a face. “Done. But confirmation hasn’t come. Like… the last tick.”

Arjun shrugs in a grand way, as if he is a man with experience of systems. “Servers sleep on Sunday. Even God rests. Let the website rest.”

“Tu bhi rest karta toh achha hota,” Sunita says—if you rested too, it would be good—and flicks a bit of water at him from her fingertips.

By late morning, the sun has found its favorite patch of the courtyard and sits there like a cat. Priya helps Sunita chop vegetables for lunch. A pile of cauliflower florets grows, white and stubborn. The knife makes a steady sound: tak-tak-tak.

Sunita talks about practical things, as she always does when she doesn’t want to talk about feelings.

“There’s no coriander,” she says. “And the gas cylinder, check the weight.”

Priya nods. “I’ll go to the market lane after lunch.”

Sunita’s eyebrows lift. “Today? It’s Sunday.”

Priya shrugs, trying to make it casual. “I also want to check the portal once, from Sharma Ji. Just… to see.”

Sunita doesn’t argue. She understands the itch of unfinished proof.

After lunch—simple rice, aloo gobhi, and the last of yesterday’s pickle—Priya wraps her shawl tighter and walks toward the market.

The lane is brighter today. Without fog, distances behave. People look more solid. A group of boys on a cycle passes too fast, laughing at something that will not last till evening.

Near the bus stand, Chai Uncle is closing his thermos lid with a dramatic click.

“Ravivaar?” he says—Sunday?—and his tone carries both sympathy and judgement.

Priya lifts her bag a little, as if it is evidence. “Bas thoda kaam,” she says—just a little work.

He nods toward her bag. “Paper?”

“Paper and internet,” Priya says.

He makes a face, as if she has said two bad words together. “Internet is worse than paper. Paper at least stays where you put it.”

Priya laughs, and the laugh follows her for a few steps.

Sharma Ji’s shop is open, but with the half-heartedness of a Sunday. The shutter is lifted only enough to say, yes, I’m here, don’t make it a big thing.

Inside, the computer is on. The fan makes its distant-train noise. Sharma Ji sits with his phone in hand, scrolling as if he is searching for the day’s patience.

He looks up. “Again?”

Priya puts her folder gently on the counter. “Just checking status. The acknowledgement is there, but… you know. Confirmation.”

Sharma Ji makes the same approving sound he made yesterday, but softer. “People want ‘confirmed’ like they want a stamp on their forehead. Sit.”

The screen loads. It doesn’t load. It loads halfway and then freezes like it has remembered something else to do.

Sharma Ji clicks. Waits. Clicks again, harder, as if the mouse is the guilty one.

Priya sits on the plastic stool and watches the circle spin.

On the counter, near the keyboard, there is a small cardboard calendar with a stock photo of a waterfall and a date circled in red. Behind it, a sheet of paper is taped to the wall. Someone has printed it and forgotten it here.

It says, in bold letters: World Braille Day — Jan 4.

Priya reads it twice.

“Sharma Ji,” she asks, pointing, “what is Braille?”

Sharma Ji doesn’t look up. “Some dots. Blind people reading system.” He says it like a definition he has memorized for a form he once had to fill.

Priya leans closer to the poster. Under the heading is a little chart—raised dots drawn as black circles, arranged in patterns.

“Dots?” Priya repeats.

“Hmm,” Sharma Ji grunts, still wrestling the page. “Six-dot cells. Like… code.”

The word code makes Priya’s mind perk up. Code is something young people talk about as if it is a ticket to another life.

At that moment, the bell above the door jingles and Irfan steps in, carrying the cold air with him.

He pauses when he sees Priya and gives a small smile, easy and unforced. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Priya says back, and feels the old warmth in her ears.

“To print?” Sharma Ji asks him, already resigned.

“Just to recharge,” Irfan says, and then, noticing the poster Priya is staring at, adds, “Oh. Braille Day today.”

Priya turns to him. “You know about it?”

Irfan nods. “Our school had a program once. They showed the alphabet. You read with fingers.”

Priya looks at her own fingertips. They have small cuts from vegetable chopping. A faint turmeric stain on the nail. Fingers that do work, not reading.

“How do you read dots?” she asks.

Irfan points at the chart. “Each pattern is a letter. Like—” He leans in, tracing the air, not touching the paper. “This is A. One dot. Then B is two. It builds.”

Priya imagines reading like that, by touch. Not by eyes, not by screen brightness and network bars. Proof that stays under your fingertip.

Sharma Ji finally sits back with a sound of defeat. “Website slow. Come tomorrow. Sunday they also sleep.”

Arjun’s voice echoes in Priya’s head: servers sleep on Sunday.

Priya exhales. The disappointment is small, but sharp.

Irfan taps his phone screen once. “You can still take a screenshot of the acknowledgement page? Maybe it helps.”

Sharma Ji waves a hand. “Acknowledgement is already printed. She has it.”

“I know,” Irfan says. “But… backup.”

Priya’s mind immediately likes the idea of backup. Backup is comfort with a modern name.

Sharma Ji grumbles but opens the folder on the desktop that has Priya’s scanned documents. He navigates quickly now, the way he does when he chooses cooperation.

The acknowledgement opens—a simple page with her name and an application number. Sharma Ji prints one more copy.

“Take,” he says, sliding it over. “Now you have two proofs for one thing. Happy?”

Priya takes the paper like it is warm bread. “Thank you,” she says, and means it.

Irfan waits while she tucks it into her folder, behind the stamped receipt, making a clean stack of certainty.

When she steps out of the shop, the market lane has grown louder. A vendor calls out prices. Somewhere, someone is frying pakoras; the oil smell grabs her and refuses to let go.

At the chemist, she buys cough lozenges because Sunita has been clearing her throat all morning like she’s negotiating with a cold.

The chemist hands her a small box. As Priya turns it in her hand, she notices tiny raised dots on one side—so faint you could miss them if you weren’t looking.

Braille.

She runs her fingertip over the bumps. They are steady. They don’t buffer. They don’t disappear.

Outside, she stops near a wall and—without thinking too much—closes her eyes and tries to feel the pattern. It is meaningless to her, just texture. But the fact that it could become meaning, for someone else, makes her chest feel strangely full.

At home, Sunita is folding the dry sweaters with a satisfaction that belongs only to winter sunshine.

Priya holds up the lozenges. “For your throat,” she says.

Sunita squints at the box. “What is written?”

Priya points at the dots. “This. Braille. For people who can’t see.”

Sunita touches it once, lightly, and then withdraws her hand as if she’s touched something sacred. “Achha,” she says—oh—and there is respect in the syllable.

Arjun appears, instantly interested only because it is new. “Let me feel.”

He closes his eyes dramatically and runs his finger over the dots. “I can’t read. I’m blind,” he declares, opening one eye to check if anyone is laughing.

“First you have to learn,” Priya says, and hears herself sounding like Sana.

Rakesh looks up from the newspaper. “Reading with fingers,” he says, thoughtful. He looks at his own hands—hands with soil lines, warehouse dust, small old scars. “Life teaches many alphabets.”

It is a simple sentence, but it sits in Priya like a pebble you keep in your pocket all day.

In the evening, the fog begins to return, quietly, as promised. The lane softens at the edges again. The courtyard light becomes yellow and tired.

Priya takes out her squared notebook and writes one line under today’s date:

• If no confirmation by Tuesday, ask Sharma Ji to call/help check.

Then she draws a small box beside it.

Not a tick. Not yet.

She places the plastic folder back on its shelf. She presses her palm on it for a second, feeling the smooth cover through the plastic—like a seal.

On her phone, Sana has sent another message: Proud of you.

Priya types back, slowly, because she wants the words to land properly.

Thik hai, she writes—it’s okay, it’s settled for now.

She goes to the courtyard and stands in the returning fog, looking at the sweaters folded neatly, the rope now empty, the day already turning into tomorrow.

Somewhere in the dark, a bicycle bell rings once.

Priya thinks of stamps and acknowledgements, of paper proof and digital proof—and then of the tiny raised dots on a medicine box, proof you can read without light.

The year is still mostly unknown. But today has left its marks in more than one way.

That feels, unexpectedly, like enough.