Utho, Jago

Monday arrives with a kind of honesty.

Not warm, exactly. Just less tricky.

The fog has thinned overnight, and the lane outside the Verma house is visible all the way to the bend. The neem tree looks like itself again instead of a rumour. Sunita calls it “dhoop”—sunlight—though it is really only a pale patch on the courtyard floor that moves an inch every half hour.

Priya wakes before the alarm because her body has started expecting the day to ask for things.

She lies for a moment under the quilt, listening.

The hand pump creaks somewhere nearby. A cycle bell rings twice and stops. In the back room, Rakesh’s breath is steady, deep—the particular heaviness of sleep after a night shift.

Priya rubs her fingertips together.

Not prayer.

Practice.

She gets up, pulls on her sweater, and goes to the kitchen where Sunita is already setting chai to boil.

“Today the cold will come back,” Sunita says, stirring the milk like she is stirring news. “In the evening. Everyone is saying.”

Priya thinks of forwarded messages and official fonts. She has learned that in winter, warnings travel faster than buses.

Arjun appears in the doorway, hair damp, school bag slung on one shoulder with dramatic suffering.

“Why school today?” he says, as if Monday is a personal attack.

Sunita raises an eyebrow. “Because you are a student. That is the job.”

Arjun makes a sound that means fine, but also I will complain again later.

Then he drops a chart paper onto the table.

“Ma’am said bring a chart,” he says. “On ‘National Youth Day.’ Big heading. Quote. One picture. One paragraph. Like we are all news channels.”

Priya looks at the blank sheet. Chart paper always feels expensive even when it isn’t.

“National Youth Day?” she repeats.

Arjun nods, already annoyed at having to know the name of his own assignment. “Vivekananda birthday. You know the monk guy? ‘Get up’ something.”

Priya smiles. “You are also getting up.”

“Only because of you people,” Arjun says, then adds quickly, “Find me one quote. In English. Short. Teacher said no spelling mistakes.”

Priya glances at Sunita, who is spooning sugar with the calm authority of someone who knows spelling mistakes are rarely the biggest problem.

“I’ll find,” Priya says.

Her phone is on low battery, but she opens it anyway and searches carefully, slow as if the internet might break if she moves too fast. A quote appears—the one she half-remembers from posters and speeches.

“Utho, jago,” she reads softly—rise, awake—and then in English, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.”

Arjun squints. “Too long.”

“It’s one line,” Priya says.

“Then my paragraph becomes long,” he argues, as if length is something that spreads by contact.

Priya scrolls, finds another shorter line, then changes her mind. The first one is famous. Familiar is useful.

“We’ll keep this,” she decides. “One line is enough. You can write small paragraph about youth and strength. Not like speech. Like normal.”

Arjun looks relieved by the word normal, then immediately pretends he isn’t.

Priya pours chai into steel tumblers, leaves one on the floor near the back room door—close enough that Rakesh will find it when he wakes, not close enough to wake him.

Then she tucks her notebook and plastic folder into her bag.

Under Work, she writes a new line:

• Print quote for Arjun chart

The act of writing makes the task behave.

Outside, the lane smells of damp earth warming slightly. The sun is bright enough to make small things look sharper—an orange peel, a torn political poster, a rooster’s footmarks in dust.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle’s stall is already busy with men holding their hands near the stove and pretending it is casual.

He sees Priya and grins. “Madam fingers! Today you will type the whole newspaper?”

“Only one quote,” Priya says.

“Quote?” he repeats, interested the way he is interested in all words that sound like they might become gossip.

“Arjun has chart,” Priya explains.

Chai Uncle nods gravely. “Youth Day. Everyone is youth today. Even me.”

“You are youth?” Priya asks.

He points to his chest. “Inside. Very youth.” Then he adds, “Outside, cold. Inside, youth.”

Someone’s phone nearby is playing a clip—some announcer voice saying “National Youth Day” and “Swami Vivekananda” with the same seriousness as a weather bulletin.

Priya warms her palms around the tumbler. The ginger hits her throat in a way that feels like a small engine starting.

“Cold will return,” one man says.

Chai Uncle snorts. “Cold never left. It just went to drink water.”

Priya laughs, pays, and heads toward Sharma Ji’s shop.

The shutter is up today, full day, and already the shop is crowded. Monday is always a second Sunday for paperwork—people coming back to the tasks they avoided.

The printer is coughing. The fan is spinning like it is trying to remember summer.

Sharma Ji looks up, sees her, and immediately looks away, as if eye contact is a contract.

Priya waits with her folder on her lap, watching the screen glow in everyone’s faces.

When her turn comes, she slides her phone toward him.

“Print this one line,” she says. “For my brother’s chart.”

Sharma Ji reads, lips moving slightly—English words passing through a Hindi mouth. “Arise, awake…” He makes a sound that is neither approval nor disapproval.

“You type,” he says suddenly, pushing the keyboard toward her. “I am busy. You type, I print.”

For a second, Priya’s stomach flips. Typing in front of people feels different from typing when the shop is empty. Like dancing when the music is too loud.

But she has been practicing.

She places her fingers where she has trained them to go.

F and J.

The bumps.

She types slowly:

ARISE, AWAKE, AND STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED.

She pauses.

Space bar.

Every space is a small decision.

She looks up at the screen. The line sits there, neat and strict, with all its spaces behaving.

Sharma Ji grunts. “Okay. Print.

And—” he points at the corner of the desk where a man is holding a crumpled handwritten page, “type this also. Names and dates. In Hindi.”

The man’s page is a mess of ink and enthusiasm. A list of people, perhaps for some youth club or meeting, written in fast Devanagari that loops into itself.

Priya hesitates.

Hindi typing.

Different keyboard.

But she remembers what Sharma Ji said earlier in the week: be careful with people’s words.

“I will try,” she says.

Her hands move slower now, not because she is afraid, but because she is paying attention. The Hindi layout takes her a moment each time, like finding a switch in the dark.

The shop’s noise becomes background—printer whine, someone arguing about Aadhaar photocopies, a phone ringing and ringing.

Priya types each name carefully, checking twice.

When she finishes, Sharma Ji prints both pages and slides them to the man.

The man looks at the neat printout and smiles like it has become more official just by being straight.

“Good,” he says, and puts a folded note on the counter.

Sharma Ji takes it, counts quickly, then—without ceremony—pushes a small note toward Priya.

“Seventy,” he says. “For Hindi. Harder.”

₹70.

It is not a salary. It is not a miracle.

But it is proof.

Priya tucks it into her notebook with the same care she uses for receipts.

At home, Sunita is roasting sesame on a flat pan. The seeds jump and pop like tiny impatient thoughts. The smell fills the room—warm, nutty, sweet.

“Did you print?” Sunita asks.

Priya holds up the quote printout like a certificate.

“And… work,” she adds, and shows the ₹70.

Sunita’s face changes in a small way—pride trying to look like practicality.

“Keep,” Sunita says. “In your envelope.”

The KEYBOARD envelope.

Priya goes to the shelf above the trunk, pulls it out from behind her plastic folder.

Inside: ₹50.

Now: ₹120.

Still short of ₹250. But the distance has changed.

Arjun sprawls on the floor with his chart paper, drawing a thick heading. He writes NATIONAL YUTH DAY.

Priya coughs politely.

Arjun looks up. “What?”

“Y-O-U-T-H,” Priya says, trying to keep her voice calm. “Youth. Not yuth.”

Arjun groans and scratches it out. “Why English has so many useless letters?”

Priya thinks of Hindi typing and almost agrees.

She hands him the printed quote.

Arjun reads it, then looks at her suspiciously. “You typed this?”

“Yes,” Priya says.

Arjun stares as if she has announced she can fly. Then he says, grudgingly, “Okay. Nice.”

A compliment from Arjun always arrives wearing a disguise.

In the afternoon the sun sits on the roof like a lazy guest. Priya helps Sunita roll til ke laddoo—sesame sweets—warm jaggery binding the seeds together. The mixture sticks to Priya’s fingers.

She rubs thumb and index finger together and feels the sesame grit.

Her hands smell like winter.

By evening, Sunita’s morning prediction becomes true. A sharpness returns to the air, a north-westerly bite that makes the courtyard feel suddenly larger and emptier. The light fades early.

Rakesh wakes, drinks chai, eats two laddoos, and says, “Cold is coming again.”

“Cold is always coming,” Arjun mutters, which makes Sunita slap his arm lightly.

Priya checks the college portal once—just once. The status still sits there, unmoved: under review.

She does not fight it tonight.

Instead she opens her notebook and writes two lines, steady and simple:

Worry: - BA portal: under review

Work: - Typed quote + Hindi list (₹70) - Keyboard fund: ₹120

Then she adds, for herself:

• Practice: name x10

She lies down, quilt pulled to her chin. The room is cold at the edges, warm in the center. Outside, someone is lighting a small bonfire near the lane and the smoke smells like damp wood and patience.

Priya presses her fingertips together lightly.

“Utho, jago,” she whispers again—rise, awake—and this time it feels less like a slogan and more like instructions for tomorrow morning.