Home Row

Monday comes back with its full weight.

Sunday has a way of forgiving you—if you waste time, it wastes it with you. Monday does not.

Priya wakes before her alarm because her mind has already started making lists. The courtyard is still grey, as if the fog has decided to move inside the walls for a while. A thin film of cold sits on the hand pump handle. She wraps her shawl tighter and thinks, automatically, of the one thing she still doesn’t have.

Confirmed.

Not the stamp she can touch in her folder, not the acknowledgement page she printed twice like a prayer. The final small digital word that would let her exhale without noticing.

In the kitchen, Sunita is lighting the stove with the patience of a person who has lit a stove through every kind of morning.

“Chai?” Sunita asks.

“Haan,” Priya says—yes—and then adds, lightly, like it’s not sitting on her tongue, “I’ll go to Sharma Ji for a minute. Before the crowd.”

Sunita doesn’t look up, but Priya can feel her mother’s understanding in the way she doesn’t make it a discussion. “Go,” she says. “And bring dhaniya—coriander—if it’s good today.”

From the inner room, Arjun groans at the universe. “Why is it still night outside?”

“It’s not night,” Priya calls. “It’s winter.”

“Same thing,” he mutters.

Rakesh is already awake, sitting on the edge of the charpai, rubbing his hands together as if he’s trying to start a fire with friction alone. The newspaper is folded beside him, unread.

“Today you’ll check again?” he asks.

Priya nods. “Just once.” She pauses. “Maybe it will show something.”

Rakesh’s face does the thing it often does when he wants to be encouraging but doesn’t want to create false comfort. A small tilt. A small hmm.

“Website also has its own mood,” he says finally.

Priya smiles despite herself. “Like Arjun.”

Arjun appears in the doorway at the exact moment his name is used. “What about me?”

“Nothing,” Priya says too quickly.

Arjun narrows his eyes, suspicious by nature. Then he notices her bag. “You’re going out?”

“Just to check status,” Priya says.

Arjun lifts his chin like a guru. “I told you. Servers wake up late on Monday. They partied on Sunday.”

Sunita flicks a steel spoon gently at him. “Eat something first. Don’t become philosophy on empty stomach.”

Priya drinks half her tea in two fast sips, the warmth sinking into her fingers. She tucks her plastic folder under her arm as if it’s a second ribcage, slips her squared notebook into her bag, and steps out.

The lane is quiet, fog clinging to the edges. At the bus stand she pauses long enough for a few sips of ginger chai—just enough warmth to stop her fingers from complaining—then makes herself move on before comfort turns into delay.

The shutter is open properly today, which is already a good sign.

Inside, the fan makes its distant-train sound. Sharma Ji is at the counter, already irritated at a printer that hasn’t done anything wrong yet.

“Again,” he says, without looking up.

Priya places her folder down gently. “Just checking.”

Sharma Ji pulls the keyboard toward him and wakes the computer with a slap of the spacebar. “Sit. Don’t breathe. Sometimes website gets scared.”

Priya sits on the plastic stool and tries to make her face neutral, as if the portal can sense hope.

The page loads.

It loads halfway.

It loads fully.

Priya holds her breath like she’s waiting for someone to announce exam results.

Sharma Ji clicks on her application number. The status line appears.

Payment received. Application under review.

Priya’s chest loosens by one notch. Not a full release, not the final word. But something.

“See?” Sharma Ji says, satisfied as if he personally collected the fee. “At least it didn’t eat your money.”

Priya laughs, a short sound. “Haan,” she says—yes. “At least.”

Sharma Ji leans back. “Now you wait. Under review means they are doing their slow job. Don’t come here every hour and make my blood pressure high.”

Priya looks at the line again, just to make sure it stays. “Can we… print this?”

“Everything you want to print,” Sharma Ji mutters, already reaching for the mouse. “Paper people. All of you.”

While the printer whirs, Priya’s eyes drift to the keyboard. It’s an old one, the kind where some letters have rubbed off and one key is slightly tilted like it’s tired.

She notices two tiny bumps—one on the F key and one on the J.

They are so small she wonders if she’s imagining them. She runs her fingertip over the F key lightly, and feels it again: a raised mark. A tiny certainty.

“Sharma Ji,” she asks, “why is there a bump here?”

Sharma Ji glances. “So you can type without looking. Home row.”

“Home row?” Priya repeats, amused by the phrase.

“F and J,” he says. “Your fingers sit here. People who do typing, they don’t look at keys. They look at screen and fingers move. Like magic.”

Like magic.

Priya thinks of yesterday’s Braille poster, the idea of reading with fingertips. And now this—writing with fingertips, guided by two small bumps.

The bell above the door jingles and Irfan steps in, carrying a little cold with him.

He sees Priya and smiles. “Portal worked today?”

Priya holds up the printed page like proof of life. “It says ‘payment received’. Under review.”

“That’s progress,” Irfan says.

“It feels like progress,” Priya says, and realizes that’s the truest sentence.

Irfan’s eyes go to the keyboard as she looks at it again. “Those bumps?” he asks. “F and J?”

Priya nods. “I just noticed. Like Braille. Small marks.”

Irfan pulls out the stool beside her without asking permission, the way people do when the space is already familiar.

“They’re for touch typing,” he says. “So you can find the right place with your fingers. My cousin did a computer course. They made him practice—A-S-D-F, J-K-L-semicolon… again and again.”

Priya imagines herself doing that: repeating letters like a child learning to write, but on a keyboard.

It’s slightly embarrassing.

It’s also… possible.

Sharma Ji slides her printout over with the sound of a small victory. “Keep. And now go home. Your work is done.”

Priya doesn’t move immediately. She looks at the keyboard again, the worn letters, the raised bumps.

“Sharma Ji,” she says carefully, “if I want to learn typing… how?”

Sharma Ji stares at her like she has asked him to teach her to fly.

“Typing?” he repeats.

Priya nods. “Just basic. So I’m not… so slow.”

Irfan’s smile turns a little wider, not teasing—more like he’s happy she said it out loud. “There are practice sites,” he offers. “Even apps. But first you learn where your fingers sit.”

Sharma Ji makes a sound that might be approval, if you listen kindly. “If you sit when the shop is empty, I can show you. Fifteen minutes. Don’t break my keys.”

Priya’s mouth opens in surprise. “Really?”

“Really,” Sharma Ji says, as if this is a burden he has accepted for society.

Priya puts her fingers on the keyboard, trying to copy what Irfan shows her.

Index fingers on F and J.

She feels the bumps under both fingertips.

Home.

It makes her laugh softly. Home row, in a shop full of cables and printer dust, in a life that has mostly taught her to keep her head down and her papers safe.

Irfan points gently. “Don’t curl your wrists too much. Relax. Like this.”

Priya tries again.

F. J.

She taps each key once, just to hear it. The sound is small, dry, definite.

Sharma Ji snorts. “Bas—enough. Now she will type essays.”

Priya stands, cheeks warm, not from the cold now. “Thank you,” she says, to both of them.

Outside, the market lane is waking properly. A vegetable cart rattles past. Someone shouts about fresh guavas. The fog is thinning in strips, letting the sun show through in pale patches.

Priya buys coriander that smells sharp and alive. She starts to buy peanuts too—because her mood has lifted and she likes having something small to offer the day—then decides against it. If she brings peanuts home, Arjun will make it a referendum.

In the afternoon, while Sunita rests her eyes for a few minutes and the house moves into its softer hours, Priya opens her squared notebook.

Under today’s date she writes:

• Portal status: payment received, under review (printed)
• Practice typing: 15 minutes, 3 days this week

She draws two small boxes beside the lines.

Not ticks yet.

But space for them.

In the evening, when the light turns yellow and the cold starts crawling back into corners, Rakesh gets up to leave for his warehouse shift. He moves quietly, checking his phone, checking his wallet, checking the world.

Priya pours tea into a steel tumbler and hands it to him.

He takes it, warming his hands around it. “You got update?” he asks.

Priya nods. “Payment received. Under review.”

Rakesh gives a small satisfied grunt. “Good.”

“And,” Priya adds, surprising herself, “I might learn typing. Sharma Ji said he’ll show me when it’s empty.”

Rakesh looks at her for a moment. Then he nods, slow and firm, like he is placing another stable object in the house.

“Learn,” he says. “Hands can do many things.”

Priya thinks of the bumps on F and J. Of raised dots on a medicine box. Of paper stamps and digital statuses.

She watches her father step into the evening fog, his shape softening at the edges as he walks toward the gate.

The day has not given her confirmed.

But it has given her something else: a place to put her fingers, and a small, practical idea that feels like the beginning of steadier ground.

She goes back inside and, before the kitchen light fully fades, she draws two neat boxes in her notebook again—just in case she will need more room for ticks.

It is not a promise.

It is a plan.