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Saturday arrives grey and close.

Fog sits on everything—the neem leaves, the courtyard wall, even the sound of the highway.

Priya wakes and, without thinking, rubs her thumb over the place where an F key would be.

Only blanket.

She laughs quietly at herself.

Sunita is up. She always is. The stove flame is low and patient. The kettle sits on it like a person sitting close to a fire, absorbing heat without complaint.

“Thand bahut hai,” Sunita says—so much cold—and the sentence feels less like news and more like a fact everyone has signed.

Priya wraps her shawl tighter and pours chai into two steel tumblers. One is for Sunita. One is for the room where Rakesh sleeps.

He came back after dawn, a little later than usual, scarf pulled up to his eyes.

Now his breathing is even. The house adjusts itself around it.

Arjun is at the table, pretending he is studying. His book is open. His mind is somewhere else.

“You have school today?” Priya asks, because even asking has become part of their cold-wave routine.

Arjun makes a face. “Saturday class,” he says as if it is a personal insult. “They will send homework. Then they will say ‘write neatly’. As if neatness will improve network.”

Priya nudges his elbow. “Write your name neatly at least.”

Arjun looks at her quickly, then at her fingers. He smirks. “Madam typist.”

Priya can’t help smiling. The word feels too big for her, but it also feels… possible.

Sunita sets a plate of potato-stuffed parathas between them. “Eat. Fog eats people who don’t eat,” she says, half-joking.

Priya takes a bite. The paratha is hot enough to make her eyes water. She feels thankful for simple heat.

Her phone lies face-down beside her notebook. She turns it over.

No new message.

The status bar at the top of the screen shows two thin lines of network, like a weak promise.

She tells herself not to open the college portal. Not yet.

Instead, she opens WhatsApp.

A voice note from Sana is waiting, sent late last night.

Priya presses play.

“Priya, you did it, okay?” Sana’s voice is loud enough to cut through fog. “You got paid also, na? Bahut sahi—very good. Don’t stop now. Ask Sharma Ji if he has regular typing—even small-small. Money is money.

And stop checking that portal every hour. If it is under review, let it be under review.”

Priya snorts into her chai.

Sunita looks up. “What happened?”

“Sana is giving lecture,” Priya says.

Sunita nods, satisfied. “Good. Friends should give lecture. Family gives only taunts.”

Arjun makes an offended noise. “I give both.”

The kettle whistles. Priya stands, pours a tumbler for her father, and leaves it near his bed without waking him.

On the way back, she pauses by the shelf above the trunk and slides out her plastic folder—receipts, acknowledgements, and that familiar line: Application under review.

She finds the scrap paper and reads it.

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

And beneath it, in Sharma Ji’s quick hand, one extra line she hadn’t noticed properly yesterday:

• 1–2–3–4 (index fingers only)

Priya laughs again, surprised by how bossy the line looks.

“Where are you going?” Sunita asks.

Priya hesitates, then says it plainly. “To practice.”

Arjun lifts his eyebrows. “In this fog?”

“Just to Sharma Ji,” Priya says. “Not to America.”

Arjun grins. Sunita sighs in that way that means permission has been granted.

“Go,” Sunita says. “But walk slowly. Fog is… badmash—mischievous.”

Priya steps outside.

The lane smells like damp earth and woodsmoke. Somewhere, someone is burning something to fight the cold—old leaves, maybe, or bits of cardboard. The smoke hangs low, unable to rise.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle’s stall is open, a small island of steam and gossip.

He sees Priya and lifts a tumbler in greeting. “Madam! Today also papers?”

“Today fingers,” Priya says.

Chai Uncle clucks with approval, as if she has announced she is going to temple.

He pours her chai with extra adrak—ginger—without asking, and then points to a phone lying beside his cash box.

“My nephew sent,” he says. “IMD warning.”

Priya leans in. The message is a forwarded screenshot: Very Dense Fog for coming days, some lines about cold wave.

Chai Uncle squints at the screenshot. “Very dense fog,” he reads, then snorts. “Fog is fog.”

Priya looks at the words and thinks of her own screen: under review.

Chai Uncle taps the phone with a tobacco-stained finger. “Warning means—don’t be hero. Walk slow. Drink chai.”

Priya sips. “I am following third point,” she says.

Chai Uncle laughs, pleased with her.

A shared auto passes, headlights dimmed by fog. The driver honks twice, not to threaten anyone, just to announce existence.

Priya finishes her chai, warms her hands around the tumbler until her fingers feel alive again, and continues.

Sharma Ji’s shop is open. The shutter is lifted a little higher than yesterday, but the shop still feels like it is waking reluctantly.

The printer coughs once, as if to say it is also cold.

Sharma Ji looks up. “You came again.”

“I said I will practice,” Priya says.

“Haan haan—yes yes,” Sharma Ji mutters, as if her determination is an inconvenience. “Fifteen minutes. And don’t press keys like you are killing mosquitoes.”

Priya sits.

The keyboard is warm today. Not borrowed warmth—earned warmth from the hands of people who have been here since morning.

She places her index fingers on F and J.

Bumps.

Her shoulders drop a little.

She opens a blank document and starts with the simplest thing: numbers.

1 2 3 4

She tries using only her index fingers, as instructed. It is slower than she wants, but it feels clean. Like drawing a straight line with a ruler.

Sharma Ji watches for a moment, then turns away to argue with someone on the phone about a scan.

Priya moves to her name.

Priya Verma.

She types it five times. On the third time she forgets the space. She fixes it. She feels, ridiculously, proud of the space.

A man comes in asking about a ticket; Sharma Ji points to a stool and says, “Sit. Wait.”

Priya tries not to let the presence of strangers make her fingers stiff.

She tells herself: these people don’t know her. They don’t know how new this is.

She returns to as df and jk kl.

Her mistakes are fewer. Her backspaces are quicker.

After fifteen minutes, Sharma Ji says, “Bas.”

Priya lifts her hands and flexes her fingers like they are small tired workers.

She is about to stand when Sharma Ji, without looking at her, says, “Do you know how to type in English properly? Like sentence?”

Priya hesitates. “Little.”

He slides a small notebook across the counter. “One uncle wants a complaint letter typed for the electricity office. He wrote in Hindi. You can type Hindi?”

Priya’s heart does a small somersault. “I can try.”

Sharma Ji flips the keyboard settings and points to the screen. “Type. Clean. Then I print.”

Priya stares at the Hindi letters on the screen and starts slow.

Dear Sir,

Then Hindi.

Her fingers search, clumsy. The letters are not where her mind expects them to be. It is like walking in fog—you know the road, but your feet still hesitate.

Behind her, the man waiting on the stool clears his throat. Someone outside honks. The printer coughs again.

Priya keeps going.

She doesn’t get everything perfect. Once, a matra lands in the wrong place and the word looks like it is winking. She fixes it.

Sharma Ji leans over her shoulder once, points at a mistake, says nothing.

Priya corrects it.

Twenty minutes later, the letter is done.

It looks official in that plain-font way official things do. The words sit in straight lines, disciplined.

Sharma Ji prints it and hands it to her.

“Good,” he says, as if the word costs him.

He pulls out a fifty and then, after a pause, adds a ten-rupee coin.

“Sixty,” he says. “Hindi is harder.”

Priya’s ears heat up. “Thank you,” she says quickly.

Sharma Ji waves her away. “Go. And tell the uncle—check letter before giving. People make mistakes, office catches and then they shout. Not my shouting.”

Priya nods solemnly, as if she has just been given a government post.

Outside, the fog has thinned slightly. The lane is still pale, but shapes are clearer.

Priya walks home carefully, fingers inside her shawl, feeling the coin’s cold edge through the cloth.

At home, Arjun is still at the table. His book is open to the same page. His pen has moved only a little.

He looks up, curious despite himself. “Practice?”

Priya places the sixty on the table.

Arjun’s eyes widen. “Again?”

Sunita comes from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her dupatta. She sees the money and immediately looks past it to Priya’s face.

Priya hands her the printed letter. “Typed in Hindi,” she says.

Sunita’s eyebrows rise. “Hindi also?”

Priya shrugs, trying to look casual. Inside, she feels like she has climbed something.

Sunita reads the first line, lips moving, then nods once. “Shabaash—well done.”

Priya tucks the ten-rupee coin into her notebook and the fifty under the elastic band where her emergency cash used to live alone.

Not alone now, she thinks.

Later, when Rakesh wakes, he drinks the cold chai without complaint and asks only one question: “Fog still?”

Sunita says, “IMD says very dense.”

Rakesh makes a sound from deep in his chest. “Then I will leave early for shift.”

Priya wants to tell him about the sixty. She wants to say: I worked.

But she remembers Sunita’s advice from yesterday—let him sleep, don’t give him worry—and she adjusts her words.

“I went to practice,” she says instead.

Rakesh looks at her hands. His eyes soften. “Good,” he says. “Learn. But don’t catch cold doing learning.”

Priya nods.

In the evening, when the fog returns, she checks the college portal once.

Still: Application under review.

For a moment, the familiar pinch rises.

Then she looks at her notebook—at the two neat lines that weren’t there a week ago.

• Typed customer list — ₹50
• Typed Hindi letter — ₹60

The pinch loosens.

Some things are under review, she tells herself.

Some things are already approved.

She lies down, tucks her hands under the quilt, and presses her fingertips together lightly.

Not prayer.

Just practice, even in the dark.