The Confirmation Slip

Thursday arrives still wearing yesterday’s festival smell.

The courtyard has a faint sweetness trapped in it—til (sesame) and gud (jaggery) in the corners of the air, smoke from someone’s late bonfire, and the honest scent of khichdi that has decided it will live in the walls for at least one more day.

Priya wakes to that familiar winter hush where sound travels farther than it should. Even the hand pump’s creak seems polite.

Sunita is already up, of course. She is rinsing steel tumblers with the kind of focus that says: we celebrated; now we reset.

“Fog again,” Sunita says, as if she has checked the fog’s attendance on a register.

From the lane, someone coughs like a drum.

Priya sits on the edge of the bed and, out of habit, checks her notebook before her phone.

Two lines stare back at her, neat and unromantic:

• ₹250 (keyboard)
• Status: Approved (print slip)

The word Approved is still there, not evaporated in sleep.

Her phone lies face-down beside her pillow like it is also resting.

She flips it over.

No new messages. No new panic.

Just yesterday’s portal notification sitting quietly, waiting to be turned into paper.

In the kitchen, Arjun is doing the special post-festival activity of eating laddoos as if they are not counted.

Sunita sees him and says, “Bas, bas (enough, enough).”

Arjun puts the laddoo back with a look that says the plate has betrayed him.

Rakesh is awake too, sitting in the courtyard wrapped in a shawl, rubbing his hands as if trying to start a fire through friction.

“Warehouse today?” Priya asks.

“Evening,” he says. “They said more parcels. After festival people send things.”

He says it like weather.

Then he looks at her and adds, softer, “You will go for your… slip?”

Slip. Confirmation. Proof. He doesn’t care what it’s called as long as it becomes something you can keep.

Priya nods. “Today.”

Sunita glances at the shelf where Priya’s plastic folder lives above the trunk. Her eyes go there the way some people glance at a temple.

“Go early,” Sunita says. “Before the crowd. And before fog becomes stubborn.”

Priya knows what “go early” means in her mother’s language: go before the shop gets cranky, before the printer runs out of ink, before the network decides to perform.

She finishes a quick breakfast—two bites of leftover khichdi warmed on the tawa (flat griddle), with pickle that wakes her whole mouth—and tucks the KEYBOARD envelope and her plastic folder into her bag.

The folder makes a sound when it moves, a thin shhk, like a small animal shifting in its sleep.

Outside, the lane is damp and cold, and the fog has turned the world into a soft-edged photograph. Shapes approach and only later become people.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is already doing business with winter.

He sees Priya and immediately says, “Today you are a big student now.”

“I am not,” Priya says, because she does not trust compliments until they have signatures.

Chai Uncle pours chai with a flourish that is wasted on nobody.

He nods at a man’s phone where a forwarded message is being shown around like a holy text.

“IMD warning,” someone announces. “Very dense fog again.”

Chai Uncle snorts. “Fog has become regular customer.”

Priya takes her chai and warms her fingers around the glass.

On the radio inside the stall, the newsreader’s voice is crisp, as if it comes from a place without winter. A line floats out between songs:

“Aaj Army Day hai (today is Army Day)… parade…”

Arjun would have liked that sentence. He likes anything with the word day in it.

Priya drinks slowly, watches the fog, and tries to feel the day’s shape.

Slip. Keyboard.

Two errands, but each one is really a question: can she keep what she is building?

She walks to Sharma Ji’s shop with her scarf pulled high. The market lane is awake in layers—vegetable carts first, then schoolboys with sweaters too thin for their bravado, then the people who have forms.

Sharma Ji’s shutter is up, but only halfway, as if the shop is also conserving energy.

Inside, it is warmer. The computers hum like they are annoyed by human hope.

Sharma Ji looks up as Priya enters.

“Festival finished?” he asks.

“Finished,” Priya says.

He gestures at her bag. “Folder?”

Priya pulls out the plastic folder like a magician revealing a predictable trick.

Sharma Ji grunts, half approving.

“Sit,” he says. “Login.”

The portal takes its time like an elder walking to the chair on purpose.

The loading circle spins.

Priya keeps her face neutral. She has learned the skill of waiting without showing her teeth.

Finally the page appears.

Status: Approved.

The word looks less dramatic on a desktop screen than it did on her phone. On the screen, it is simply a fact among other facts, like a line item.

Sharma Ji clicks.

“Download confirmation slip,” he reads aloud, as if the portal is asking for a favor.

The file opens—a clean PDF with her name and enrollment details typed in crisp letters that do not know her.

Priya’s chest tightens anyway.

It is her name.

In a system.

Not handwritten, not smudged.

Sharma Ji reaches for the printer.

The printer makes a noise like a goat clearing its throat.

A page slides out.

Then another.

He taps the top corner to align it and stamps it with nothing—just the sharp motion of a man who trusts paper more than people.

“Take two copies,” he says. “One for you, one for when someone loses the first.”

Priya almost laughs.

She takes both copies carefully, as if they are still warm.

“How much?” she asks.

Sharma Ji says a small amount—printing charges, nothing heroic—and she pays with her phone after checking the signal twice.

UPI works.

She feels irrationally proud.

“Now keyboard?” Sharma Ji asks, already bored with her education.

Priya hesitates. “I will buy today.”

He looks at her. “You have computer at home?”

“No,” Priya admits.

Sharma Ji makes the face of a man watching someone buy a helmet before buying a bicycle.

Then, surprisingly, he says, “Still okay. Fingers will learn. You can practice… without screen also. Like tabla.”

Priya blinks.

Sharma Ji comparing her to a tabla player feels almost like a blessing.

He pushes the printed slip toward her again, as if reminding her not to forget why she came.

“And keep this dry,” he adds. “Fog is like thief. Enters everything.”

Priya tucks the confirmation slip into her plastic folder and closes it with a satisfying click.

Outside, the sun tries to appear, fails, and tries again.

She walks to the second-hand keyboard seller in the market lane.

The man sits on a low stool beside a glass counter full of phone chargers, tangled wires, and earphones that have lived too many lives. The keyboards are stacked like thin books, each one a little yellowed, each one claiming it still works.

He recognizes Priya.

“Keyboard girl,” he says, pleased with himself for having a category.

Priya ignores that and asks, “That one?”

He pulls out the keyboard she had touched earlier in the week. Its keys are slightly shiny in places where someone else’s fingers have pressed thousands of times.

Priya presses the F and J keys.

The bumps are there.

She feels a small private relief.

“Two-fifty,” the man says.

Priya opens her KEYBOARD envelope and counts the notes once, then again, because money changes personality when it leaves your hand.

She gives him ₹250.

The man counts it with the slow suspicion of someone who has been cheated by life.

Then he wraps the keyboard in newspaper.

The headline on top is about fog somewhere far away and flights delayed, but Priya only sees the letters as texture.

She holds the wrapped keyboard against her chest. It is lighter than she expected. Like a promise that doesn’t want to be heavy.

On the way home, she stops briefly at Chai Uncle’s stall again.

Chai Uncle spots the newspaper bundle and raises his eyebrows.

“What is that? Fish?”

“Keyboard,” Priya says.

Chai Uncle laughs so hard his shoulders shake. “Arre (oh), now your house will become office!”

Priya smiles despite herself.

He leans closer, suddenly serious in the way elders become when they decide to be kind.

“Slow-slow (slowly, slowly),” he says. “One key at a time.”

Priya nods. She does not tell him she likes that advice because it sounds like something you can actually do.

At home, Sunita opens the gate and immediately looks at Priya’s hands.

Priya lifts the bundle.

Sunita’s mouth makes a small O of satisfaction.

“Good,” Sunita says, as if the keyboard is a vegetable purchased at the right price.

Priya goes straight to the shelf, opens the plastic folder, and slides the confirmation slip inside. The paper joins its family—receipts, acknowledgements, printouts—like a younger cousin finally arriving.

Then she sits on her bed and unwraps the keyboard.

The keys have dust in the corners, and the space bar has a tiny wobble.

She takes a cloth, dampens it, and wipes each key slowly.

A.

S.

D.

F.

J.

K.

L.

;

Each letter becomes a small physical object.

Arjun appears at the door, curious.

“You bought?” he asks, reverent now.

Priya nods.

Arjun leans in and presses random keys like he is playing a very stupid song.

“Arjun,” Priya warns.

He lifts his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Madam typist.”

Sunita calls him to bring coriander from the bag.

Arjun leaves, but not before saying, “Now you will type my homework also.”

“No,” Priya says, smiling.

“Maybe,” she adds in her head, because in this house no is always negotiated.

In the late afternoon, when the light turns grey and the fog begins to thicken again, Priya places the keyboard in front of her like a prayer mat.

She rests her fingers on the home row.

She closes her eyes.

She types her name without looking.

P-R-I-Y-A.

V-E-R-M-A.

The keys click softly—no screen, no proof, just sound and muscle and memory.

It feels almost childish, but also deeply serious.

From the courtyard, Rakesh’s cough comes once, then stops. He is getting ready for the evening shift, tightening his scarf, moving like a man who has done this many winters.

Priya opens her eyes and looks at the keyboard again.

Two bumps.

Two anchor points.

In her folder, two clean printed copies.

In her room, a small new object that says: you can practice here.

She puts the keyboard back in its newspaper wrap, not to hide it, but to keep it safe from fog and dust—like a thing that is not yet ordinary.

At dinner, Sunita serves dal (lentil stew) and roti (flatbread) and a small piece of jaggery left from yesterday.

Rakesh eats quietly, then says, “Show me.”

Priya brings the keyboard out and sets it on the charpai (woven cot) like it is a guest.

Rakesh presses one key gently with one finger.

It clicks.

He nods, satisfied by the sound.

“Good,” he says again.

Priya wants to tell him about the confirmation slip, about her name printed cleanly, about the portal finally moving.

But the proof is already filed. The day has already held it.

So she just says, “Tomorrow I will go practice again.”

Rakesh looks at her and, for once, does not add advice.

He only says, “Haan.”

Later, when the house settles and the fog presses its face against the courtyard again, Priya lies down and listens to the soft click of the gate as Rakesh leaves for his shift.

She thinks of the confirmation slip sitting flat and dry in her folder.

She thinks of the keyboard’s quiet weight.

The day has produced two kinds of evidence.

One printed.

One held in her hands.

Both small.

Both real.