The Small Connector

Friday morning feels like it has been left outside all night.

The cold is not dramatic; it is simply there, in the water bucket, in the steel latch of the gate, in the way the floor makes her feet regret being awake. Priya sits up and pulls her shawl tighter, listening to the lane.

Fog changes sound. A bicycle bell becomes a question instead of an announcement. A distant bus horn arrives softened, as if it has passed through cotton.

Sunita’s voice comes from the kitchen. “Bahut thand hai (it’s very cold),” she says, not to complain, but to make sure the day is properly named.

Arjun answers with a theatrical groan and the sound of a blanket being dragged off a body.

Priya’s first thought is not the portal today.

Her first thought is the keyboard.

It sits beside her schoolbooks, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper like a fruit kept safe from flies. She has put it there on purpose—near enough to be seen, far enough to not be treated like a toy.

She unwraps it and rests her fingers on the home row.

Two bumps.

F and J.

She closes her eyes and types her name, the way she did last night.

P-R-I-Y-A.

The keys click softly. She can feel the rhythm, but she cannot see anything.

It is like praying without knowing if anyone is listening.

In the courtyard, Rakesh’s cough comes once and stops. He is up early, which means the warehouse has done something to the schedule again.

Priya carries the keyboard out carefully, like a tray.

Rakesh is sitting near the hand pump, rubbing his hands together. His shawl is pulled up to his ears. The fog has made his face look older and younger at the same time, blurred at the edges.

“Fog alert,” he says before anyone asks. “They were saying on the radio. Orange.”

Orange sounds festive in another life.

“Will you go?” Sunita asks, handing him a steel tumbler of chai.

“If the bus comes,” he says. “If the road allows.”

Sunita makes a small sound of annoyance, aimed at the weather.

Priya stands there with the keyboard, waiting for a moment that feels like permission.

“Babu (dear),” Sunita says to her, “eat something first.”

Priya eats two rotis with leftover dal, because winter makes even yesterday’s food feel necessary. Then she wipes her fingers carefully and goes to the shelf for her plastic folder.

The folder opens with its familiar click.

The confirmation slip sits inside, clean and flat, like it is proud of itself.

Priya touches the edge of the paper, then closes the folder again. She is not going for proof today. The proof is already home.

Today she wants practice.

Practice that answers back.

She takes the keyboard, the folder (because she never goes anywhere without it now), and steps into the lane.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is already performing kindness for cold people.

He sees Priya and points at the keyboard bundle under her arm. “Office girl is coming!”

Priya smiles. “I’m going to ask something.”

“Ask. Fog is listening also,” he says, pouring chai.

Someone on the bench reads a forwarded warning aloud: “Very dense fog. Next three days.”

Chai Uncle shakes his head like the weather is a stubborn relative.

Priya drinks her chai and lets the warmth settle in her fingers.

Then she walks to Sharma Ji’s shop.

The shutter is half up again. It always looks like the shop is deciding whether it wants to deal with human beings.

Inside, the computers hum with their regular irritation.

Sharma Ji looks up. “Keyboard?”

“Yes,” Priya says. “At home I can do… without screen. But I want to see also.”

Sharma Ji makes a face that is somewhere between pity and pride.

“You have laptop?” he asks.

“No.”

“Computer?”

“No.”

“Then what you want to see on?”

“My phone,” Priya says, and immediately regrets it.

Sharma Ji laughs once. “Phone is not typewriter.”

Priya stands her ground in the soft stubborn way she has. “But it has screen. And my fingers… they want to know if they are doing right.”

Sharma Ji stares at her for a second, as if she has said something sensible by accident.

Then he reaches under the counter and pulls out a small packet of cables.

“OTG,” he says.

“OTG?”

“On-the-go,” he says, and rolls his eyes at the English. “Small connector. Keyboard will connect to phone if phone supports. Many supports. Some does drama.”

He holds up a tiny adapter cable like it is a key to a new room.

“How much?” Priya asks.

“Sixty,” Sharma Ji says, as if he is doing her a favour.

Priya’s stomach tightens.

Sixty is not a big amount, but it is exactly the kind of amount that makes you pause—too small to discuss with everyone, too big to spend without thinking.

She thinks of the ₹250 she just gave away yesterday. She thinks of the plastic folder on the shelf. She thinks of her fingers clicking in the dark.

She takes a breath.

“Okay,” she says.

She pays with UPI. The loading circle spins once, twice. Outside, a scooter passes like a ghost.

Then the payment succeeds.

Priya feels an unreasonable relief, as if she has passed a test.

Sharma Ji nods at the keyboard. “Bring. We check here. If works, you can practice at home with app.”

Priya unwraps the keyboard on Sharma Ji’s counter. It looks suddenly very ordinary under tube light.

Sharma Ji plugs the OTG adapter into her phone and the keyboard’s USB into the other end. For a second, nothing happens.

Priya’s heart does a small unpleasant jump.

Then her phone screen shows a quiet message: Physical keyboard connected.

Priya doesn’t understand all the English, but she understands the feeling of the words.

She opens her Notes app.

Her hands hover.

Sharma Ji points. “Type.”

Priya places her fingers on the home row and begins.

p r i y a

The letters appear on the screen.

Not in her head.

Not as sound.

On the screen.

She blinks hard, embarrassed by how much it affects her.

Sharma Ji grunts. “Good. Now space.”

Priya presses the space bar and watches the gap appear like a small breath.

She types again.

Priya Verma

Her name looks different when it is typed by her own hands on her own phone.

It is not a printout. It is not Sharma Ji’s computer. It is not somebody else’s system.

It is hers.

Outside, a customer calls out from the door. “Bhaiya, print karna hai (brother, I need to print).”

Sharma Ji waves them in with annoyance.

He turns back to Priya for one more second. “At home, don’t play. Practice. Fifteen minutes. Stop. Fingers need rest.”

Priya nods quickly.

She wraps the keyboard again and steps out, holding the OTG cable packet like it might fly away.

On the way home, she stops at the market lane to buy coriander for Sunita. The coriander looks tired, but alive.

At home, Sunita is kneading dough with winter patience.

Priya holds up the tiny packet. “I bought one connector,” she says.

Sunita looks suspicious. “Connector?”

“To connect keyboard to phone,” Priya says, and then rushes the next part before Sunita can decide she doesn’t like it. “It’s sixty. It works. I can practice with screen.”

Sunita pauses, hands in the dough.

Then she nods slowly, as if adjusting an internal budget.

“Okay,” Sunita says. “If it helps, it helps. But don’t buy ten connectors.”

Priya laughs softly. “Only one.”

Arjun appears, drawn by the word keyboard the way he is drawn by the word match.

“Show!” he says.

Priya sets the keyboard on the bed again, like a prayer mat, and plugs it into her phone.

Arjun watches the screen with exaggerated seriousness.

“Type my name,” he commands.

“No,” Priya says automatically.

Arjun looks offended.

Priya sighs and types anyway.

A R J U N

He nods, satisfied by his own existence.

“Now type ‘Arjun is best’,” he says.

Priya presses backspace once, twice, and deletes his dreams.

Arjun laughs and runs away before she can throw a pillow.

In the afternoon, the fog does not lift fully. The world remains soft.

Rakesh leaves for his shift earlier than usual, because fog makes everything slower. Sunita packs his tiffin with extra care, as if the food can protect him on the road.

When the gate clicks shut behind him, the house becomes quieter.

Priya sits on her bed with the keyboard and phone.

She opens a free typing practice website Sharma Ji has once shown her—the kind with simple sentences and a timer. She doesn’t remember the name; she just remembers the way it counted her mistakes without judging.

The first line on the screen says:

the fog is thick

Priya smiles.

Even the practice knows.

She sets a timer for fifteen minutes, like she promised herself.

Her fingers begin.

The keys click. The letters appear. Mistakes happen and are corrected. The little red underline is annoying but useful.

Halfway through, her phone buzzes.

A WhatsApp voice note from Sana.

Priya hesitates. Normally she would listen, reply later, think, reply again.

Today her hands are already in motion.

She listens quickly.

Sana’s voice is bright with cold. “How is keyboard? Tell me you bought. And also—don’t disappear. We will study. Approved slip means now you actually have to read, madam.”

Priya snorts.

She taps reply.

Then she does something new.

She types.

Bought. It works with phone. I’m practicing. You also don’t disappear.

She reads it once. Twice.

She doesn’t edit it into a smaller version of herself.

She hits send.

The message leaves.

No drama.

No rewriting.

Just a small sentence, delivered.

When her fifteen minutes are done, she stops even though her fingers want to continue.

She unplugs the OTG cable carefully and wraps it around itself like a tiny snake put to sleep.

In the evening, Sunita makes another round of chai and calls Priya to the courtyard.

The fog has thickened again. A neighbour’s radio plays a news bulletin about delays and warnings and numbers that feel far away.

Priya warms her hands around the glass and watches the lane become a grey tunnel.

Somewhere, a kite string is still stuck on a wire, fluttering like a small flag nobody has claimed.

Priya thinks of the connector cable—so small it could be lost in a pocket—and how it has opened something anyway.

Not a door.

Just a crack.

Enough for light.

She finishes her chai and goes back inside.

Before sleeping, she places the keyboard back near her books, not wrapped too tightly, not hidden.

A thing you use.

A thing you are allowed to become ordinary with.

Outside, the fog presses its face to the courtyard again.

Inside, Priya’s phone screen is dark.

But her fingers feel less dark than yesterday.