Rubber Stamp

Sunday arrives looking harmless.

The fog is thinner than yesterday, but it still gathers in the low places—near the drain line, under the neem, at the bend where the lane meets the highway. The air has that damp-cold bite that makes even a simple bucket feel heavier.

Priya wakes when Sunita shakes the quilt near her feet. Not hard. Just enough to say get up; the day has started, even if it is a Sunday.

“Dhoop niklegi,” Sunita says—there will be sun—like a prediction and a promise.

Priya sits up and, without thinking, rubs her fingertips together.

Practice.

Not prayer.

She reaches for her phone and then stops herself halfway. If she opens the college portal before brushing her teeth, the day will become only that one line—Application under review—and everything else will shrink.

Instead she finds her sweater and steps into the courtyard.

Sunita is already collecting blankets and shawls. Sunday is for airing things—pulling dampness out of fabric, making the house smell more like sun than smoke.

“Hold this corner,” Sunita says, handing her a quilt heavy with trapped winter.

Arjun appears at the doorway, hair sticking up, looking personally offended by morning.

“Sunday also?” he complains.

Sunita gives him a look that could boil water. “Sunday is exactly the day. Go wash your face. If you are not helping, at least don’t comment.”

Arjun mutters and disappears, then reappears with a bucket because he cannot watch work happen without eventually joining in.

They string the quilt over the rope on the roof where the pale sun will reach first. From up there, Mohanlalganj looks half-drawn: water tanks floating in mist, hedges fading, a dog barking and then vanishing into white.

Rakesh is asleep in the back room. He came back before dawn from the warehouse, ate two bites of paratha, and folded into sleep like a shirt put away quickly. The house has learned to move around that silence.

Downstairs, Sunita sets a pot on the stove for gud—jaggery—to melt. Makar Sankranti is only a few days away, and winter sweets have started appearing in people’s conversations the way fog appears in lanes: without asking.

“Til ke laddoo banayenge,” Sunita says—we’ll make sesame laddoos—and Priya feels a small comfort settle in her ribs.

Arjun sits at the table with a homework sheet spread out like a warning.

“Math?” Priya asks.

“Project,” Arjun says bitterly. “Chart on ‘communication.’”

Priya raises an eyebrow. “Write: ‘Network issue.’ End.”

Arjun snorts, then smiles despite himself.

After chai, Sunita sends Priya to the market lane with a short list: peanuts, sesame, coriander, salt.

Priya writes it down anyway. If she doesn’t, something slips. Then she adds one line for herself, quick as a stolen thought.

• Ask about keyboard price.

Outside, the lane is damp enough that the dust sticks in patches. At the bus stand, Chai Uncle’s stall is already a little island of steam.

He sees Priya and lifts his chin. “Madam fingers!”

“Chai fingers,” Priya says, holding up her hands as if warmth is a skill.

He pours without asking, extra adrak—ginger—and slides the tumbler toward her.

Beside the cash box, his nephew’s phone is doing its daily duty as bulletin board. A forwarded message is open—fog warning lines, cold wave words, dates in official font.

Chai Uncle squints. “Very dense, dense, very very,” he reads, then shakes his head. “Fog is the same every year. Only the words become longer.”

Priya thinks of under review.

Words become longer. Feelings too.

On the way to the market lane, she passes Sharma Ji’s shop. The shutter is half down—Sunday half-day—but the lights are on, and the printer coughs like always.

Sharma Ji sees her through the glass and jerks his head, the universal sign for come if you are coming; don’t stand outside like a lost goat.

Priya has her list. She has errands.

But she also has that new hunger—to sit at a keyboard and make neat lines appear.

She steps in.

The shop smells of warm plastic and paper. A pedestal fan spins slowly, as if moving cold air counts as effort.

“Market?” Sharma Ji asks, looking at her bag.

“Ten minutes,” Priya says.

“Ten minutes becomes thirty,” Sharma Ji replies, because he has never believed time.

He pulls out her scrap paper and adds a new line with a chewed pen.

• name x10
• space bar

Priya looks at him. “Space bar?”

Sharma Ji shrugs. “People write without space and then fight. Space is also skill.”

Priya smiles because it is true in more than one way.

She places her fingers on F and J. Bumps.

Priya Verma.

Once. Twice.

The third time a wrong key sneaks in and the name becomes something else. She backspaces. Corrects. Today she is careful with her own words.

“Bas,” Sharma Ji says after a few minutes—enough—already turning back to his waiting work.

As she stands, courage rises like a small bubble.

“And… if I buy a keyboard,” she asks, “cheap one… can I practice at home?”

Sharma Ji looks at her as if she has asked if she can buy a cow for homework.

“Keyboard is easy,” he says. “Computer is not free. Phone typing is not same. Still—you can practice.”

“How much?” Priya asks.

“Three hundred, four hundred,” he says, waving a hand.

Three hundred is not impossible. Three hundred is a small mountain.

Priya nods and escapes back into the pale day.

Sunday makes the market lane feel fuller—sweaters, shawls, slow bargaining, and the smell of frying oil from a stall making kachori even in cold weather.

She buys peanuts and sesame, coriander with roots still wet, a packet of salt.

Near the end of the lane, an electronics repair stall is open: a table, a soldering iron, a heap of wires like a nest. Two dusty keyboards sit on top.

Priya stops.

The man looks up. “Madam? Charger?”

“Keyboard,” Priya says.

He drags one forward. Some keys shine from use.

“Two fifty,” he says quickly.

Priya presses a key. It sticks a little.

“Second-hand?” she asks, already knowing.

“Second, but good,” he says. “Cable okay.”

Two hundred fifty.

She thinks of the fifty and ten from yesterday tucked under the elastic in her notebook. Not enough.

“Okay,” she says softly. “I will see.”

The man shrugs. Sunday customers come and go like mist.

By the time she reaches home, the sun has strengthened, and the roof quilt looks almost cheerful.

Sunita is in the kitchen stirring melted jaggery with sesame. The smell is warm and nutty; it makes the whole house feel like it belongs to winter, not trapped by it.

Priya puts the groceries on the counter and takes out her notebook. Lately she has started writing two columns.

Worry:

• BA portal: under review

Work:

• Practice today: 10 minutes
• Keyboard rate: 250 (second-hand)

She draws a small box next to Practice today and ticks it.

Then she writes a new line, careful as if she is making something official.

• Keyboard fund

She pulls out yesterday’s fifty-rupee note and slides it into an old envelope Sunita keeps for small offerings. On the front she writes, in slightly crooked English: KEYBOARD.

The letters still look… stamped.

She hides the envelope behind her plastic folder on the shelf above the trunk. Not because it is the best place for money—Sunita has better places—but because Priya wants it near her documents and practice sheets, near the part of her life that is trying to become steadier.

In the afternoon, Rakesh wakes when the smell of sesame reaches him. He comes out rubbing his eyes, hair flattened.

Sunita hands him a warm laddoo.

He bites and hums approval. “Good,” he says, mouth full.

Priya watches him for a moment and then says lightly, “I practiced again.”

Rakesh nods as if this is the most normal thing in the world. “Learning takes time,” he says. “Even wheat takes time.”

Arjun rolls his eyes at the farming comparison, but he is smiling.

Evening comes fast. After four, the light changes; by five the lane already looks like night.

Priya sits on her bed with the quilt pulled up to her waist, phone in her hand.

She tells herself she will not check the portal.

She opens a typing practice app instead. Her thumbs move on glass. It isn’t the same as the keyboard, but it keeps her mind in that clean, forward rhythm.

A notification slides across the top of her screen.

A message from the college portal.

Her stomach tightens, old habit. She taps.

It isn’t a confirmation. It isn’t a rejection.

It is only a generic reminder: Keep your acknowledgement safely for future reference.

Priya stares at it for a second.

Then she laughs, soft and helpless.

“Future reference,” she says aloud. “As if I will forget.”

She locks her phone.

Somewhere in the kitchen, Sunita is packing laddoos into a steel dabba for neighbors—because sweets must travel; otherwise they become lonely.

Rakesh is tying his scarf, preparing to leave early because fog and shifts don’t wait for anyone to feel ready.

Priya lies down and presses her fingertips together lightly.

Not prayer.

Just a promise to her own hands: tomorrow also.