Borrowed Warmth

The morning arrives late, wrapped up tight, refusing to take its shawl off.

Fog sits low over Mohanlalganj. The neem leaves look like they’ve been dipped in milk and left out to dry. Sound carries strangely in this weather: a bicycle bell feels near; a nearby cough feels far.

Priya wakes to a quieter lane than usual.

It isn’t Sunday quiet.

It is school quiet.

Arjun would normally be halfway into his daily drama—“Where is my notebook?” “Who touched my other sock?”—but today he is still under the quilt, scrolling with one thumb, the phone screen shining on his cheek.

Sunita stands at the stove and rotates the kettle on a small flame the way you rotate a worry in your mind: carefully, without burning it.

Rakesh has returned from a night shift before dawn and is asleep again. His breathing is steady, and the rest of the house moves around it as if it is a glass filled to the brim.

“What happened?” Priya asks softly.

Sunita answers without turning. “Cold wave. School group message came.”

Arjun snorts, still half-buried. “Holiday,” he declares.

“Not holiday,” Sunita says. “They’re closing for younger classes. For older, they’re saying… half-half.”

“Hybrid,” Arjun supplies in English, as if it is a vegetable he dislikes.

Priya looks at him. “So you have class or no class?”

“Maybe class,” Arjun says. “Maybe not. Teacher will send link. Network will say ‘bye’. Then teacher will blame students. Whole system.”

He says it with the confidence of a person who has never paid for data.

Sunita finally turns and gives him the look that is a full paragraph.

Arjun sits up, suddenly polite. “I’ll do,” he says quickly.

Priya almost laughs.

She pours chai into steel tumblers, careful to keep the clink soft. The steam warms her face and reminds her of yesterday’s keyboard—how the keys are always slightly warm from other people’s hands.

Her own fingers feel cold and useless.

She thinks of the scrap paper inside her plastic folder:

• Priya Verma (x5)
• as df (x10)
• jk kl (x10)

A homework list with no teacher’s signature, but the same quiet authority.

Sunita sets a plate of poha—flattened rice cooked with onions and spices—on the table. “Eat first. Then your fingers can become officer.”

“Officer fingers,” Priya murmurs.

Arjun perks up at the word. “Officer?”

Sunita waves him away. “Go. Check your class messages. Don’t sit like statue.”

Priya eats slowly, listening to the lane. A few children’s voices float in the fog anyway—kids whose schooling doesn’t follow neat calendars. A vendor calls out peanuts. Somewhere, a pressure cooker whistles.

Ordinary life, just muffled.

Arjun’s phone pings. He reads aloud with exaggerated seriousness. “Link will be shared. Attendance mandatory.”

He adds, quieter, “They said keep camera on.”

Sunita laughs once, dry. “Camera on with what? Our ceiling fan?”

“I will sit properly,” Arjun insists, offended.

Priya sees his worry underneath the jokes. He is sixteen—old enough to know that missing class can become a habit, and habits become stories people tell about you.

“If you need better network, you can go to Sharma Ji,” she tells him. “I’ll come with you if you want.”

Arjun’s eyes widen. “No. I can manage. You go for your typing.”

The sentence surprises both of them.

Priya feels a small warmth that isn’t from chai.

She goes to the shelf above the trunk, pulls down the plastic folder, and slides out the newest scrap paper. The ink is slightly smeared where her thumb touched it yesterday.

At home, there is no keyboard.

She tries anyway—hands flat on the edge of the table, imagining the keys.

A-S-D-F.

J-K-L-;.

It feels like rehearsing swimming on dry land. Her fingers want something solid.

So she makes a decision that is small but real: she will go to the cyber shop today not because she needs a form, not because the portal has changed, but because her fingers need those F and J bumps the way a road needs its white lines.

Before leaving, she peeks into the room where Rakesh sleeps.

Sunlight hasn’t reached the corner yet. The air smells faintly of machine oil and winter blanket. Rakesh’s old phone lies near his mattress, charging from the one socket that works when it wants to.

Priya doesn’t wake him. She only adjusts the shawl near his shoulder.

Then she steps outside.

---

The bus stand is quieter than yesterday too. Even Chai Uncle’s stall has fewer schoolboys pretending to be men.

Chai Uncle looks at her and says, “Today lane is empty-empty.”

“Haan—yes,” Priya says. “Schools closed.”

He makes a sympathetic sound. “Cold wave. Fog is behaving like landlord. Not letting anyone go.”

Priya warms her hands around the tumbler and tells herself she will drink quickly and move.

Chai Uncle watches her fingers, as if he is tracking their education himself. “Did you do homework?”

Priya blinks. “How you know everything?”

He points at her folder. “You carry papers like they are gold. So I guessed.”

“I tried at home,” Priya admits. “But no keyboard.”

Chai Uncle nods gravely. “Then go sit on keyboard. Borrow warmth. Winter is not for learning new things.”

Priya takes this as permission.

On the way, the fog thins and thickens in patches. A motorbike passes slowly, its headlight a pale coin. Someone near the paan shop says something about trains being late again, and the sentence drifts into the air like smoke.

Sharma Ji’s shop is open, but the shutter is only halfway up, as if even it doesn’t want to fully wake.

Inside, the computer fan hums. The printer sits like a tired animal.

Sharma Ji looks up. “Why you came? Today no fee-deposit, no form?”

Priya holds up the scrap paper. “Practice.”

Sharma Ji makes a sound that could be approval if you are optimistic. “Ten minutes. Then don’t sit and dream.”

Priya sits.

The keyboard is cool at first. Her fingers find F and J by touch, the bumps like two tiny assurances.

Blank document. Eyes on screen.

She types her name once.

Priya Verma.

Then again, a little faster. She makes a mistake and backspaces. The delete feels clean, like wiping a slate.

She moves to the patterns.

as df as df

jk kl jk kl

In the quiet shop, each key has its own sound. Not music—just rhythm.

After ten minutes Sharma Ji says, “Bas—enough.”

Priya lifts her hands reluctantly.

She is about to stand when Sharma Ji holds up a palm. “Wait.”

He pulls out a loose sheet with hurried handwriting—names, mobile numbers, and something about gas booking scribbled at the bottom.

“Aunty came,” Sharma Ji says. He doesn’t say her name, and Priya doesn’t ask. “She wants this typed clean. My hand is tired. Scanner is not working properly. You can type?”

Priya’s heart stutters.

“This?” she asks, pretending the paper isn’t suddenly heavy.

Sharma Ji’s eyebrows rise. “Madam is learning. So type. Slowly.”

Priya sits again.

This is not as df.

This is people.

She starts with the first name, translating messy pen curves into straight letters the way she learned to do for forms. There are mistakes. There is backspace. There is the tiny panic of not knowing whether a spelling is right.

Once, she looks up. Sharma Ji is watching the monitor, not her hands.

Priya keeps going.

A man comes in to ask about a ticket; Sharma Ji shooes him away. “Later.”

Priya types faster at the sound of irritation, like she can outrun it.

When she finishes the last line, she reads the list once more on the screen.

It looks official.

Not because it has a stamp.

Because it is neat.

Sharma Ji squints, then—miracle—nods. He prints it. The paper slides out warm.

He hands it to Priya. “Good. Keep fifty.”

Priya blinks. “No, it’s okay—”

“It’s not charity,” Sharma Ji says, already annoyed again. “Work is work.”

He presses a folded note into her palm before she can argue.

It isn’t a lot.

But it is the first time her fingers have earned something that isn’t just a tick in a notebook.

Priya tucks the note into her notebook carefully, like she is filing it as a fact.

As she leaves, Sharma Ji adds, not unkindly, “Come when shop is empty. Practice. And if any typing comes, I will call. But don’t make mistake with people’s names.”

“I won’t,” Priya promises.

It feels bigger than it should.

---

On the way home she buys a small packet of peanuts, still warm from the pan, and thinks of Rakesh sleeping and Arjun trying to sit properly for hybrid class.

At home, Arjun is in the courtyard, phone propped against a steel tumbler as a stand, earphones in. He looks absurdly serious, chin raised as if he is addressing a parliament.

When he sees Priya, he mimes silently: later.

Priya mouths back: theek hai—okay.

She slips inside.

Sunita is folding clothes near the window to catch the best light. She looks up. “Ho gaya?”—done?

Priya sits beside her and opens her notebook.

• Typing: 10 minutes
• List typed at shop

She draws a box.

She ticks it.

Sunita watches the tick like it is a small ceremony.

Priya hesitates, then places the folded fifty-rupee note on the edge of the clean clothes.

Sunita’s eyes widen. “Where from?”

Priya tells her quietly, the way you tell someone about a good dream so it doesn’t break.

Sunita’s face changes—pride, worry, calculation, all in one breath.

“Fifty is fifty,” Sunita says finally. “Keep it safe. Don’t tell your father now; he will say, ‘Why you are working, you should study,’ and then he will worry. Let him sleep.”

Priya nods. She knows her father’s worry. It is affectionate and heavy.

From the courtyard, Arjun’s voice rises suddenly, loud and formal. “Yes ma’am, network issue ma’am. I am present ma’am.”

Sunita covers her mouth to hide a laugh.

Priya feels one too, soft and private.

Later, when evening fog returns like a familiar relative, Priya checks the portal once.

Still: Application under review.

The words don’t pinch as sharply today.

Her hands have another sentence now, one she can feel without reading:

Work is work.

She washes the peanut salt off her fingers, dries them carefully, and rubs her palms together the way Chai Uncle does when he’s cold.

Borrowed warmth, returned.

When she lies down, she tucks her hands under the quilt and presses her fingertips together once, lightly.

Not prayer.

Not magic.

Just a quiet certainty that her fingers are listening a little more each day.