The Thumbs-Up

Saturday morning comes in quietly, like someone entering a room where an old man is sleeping.

Rakesh is not old, but he returns from his shift before dawn, and the house treats that hour with the same respect. The gate clicks. A bicycle bell somewhere asks a question. Then the lane becomes blank again under fog.

Priya hears the sounds through her shawl and keeps her eyes closed for a minute, listening for the moment when the house decides it is safe to breathe normally.

In the kitchen, Sunita’s bangles make a soft clink. The kettle argues with the stove. The smell of chai spreads, familiar as a blanket.

“Aa gaye? (Has he come?)” Priya whispers, not sure who she is asking.

Sunita answers from the darkness with a practical hum. “Haan (yes). He will sleep now. Don’t make noise.”

The day is Saturday, but in winter all days feel like they are made of the same cold material. The difference is only in what people expect from you.

Priya sits up and looks at her phone.

A small notification sits there like a pebble:

Sana: Good morning madam typist.

Priya smiles before she can stop herself.

She opens the chat.

Sana has replied to yesterday’s message with a typed line (it looks strange and grown-up, coming from Sana instead of arriving as voice): Ok. Today 4 pm? I will bring notes. Also you will type my name nicely now.

Priya types back, slow and careful.

4 pm ok. I will try.

She reads it once.

She doesn’t change it.

The fact of sending words without shrinking them still feels new.

In the corner of the room, her keyboard waits beside her books. Yesterday she left it a little uncovered—like a tool, not a secret.

She pulls it closer and plugs in the OTG connector. The tiny cable feels like it should belong to someone who knows what they are doing, not to her.

Her phone flashes the message again: Physical keyboard connected.

Priya doesn’t fully understand the English, but she likes the certainty of the word connected.

She sets a timer for fifteen minutes.

It is the same promise as yesterday, but Saturday gives promises more room to grow.

Her practice website opens to a new line:

please keep distance

Priya snorts.

Even the phone is repeating the world’s advice.

She begins.

The keys click. Letters appear. Mistakes come and are removed. The space bar makes small, clean gaps like breath.

From the courtyard, Sunita calls softly, “Priya, coriander is finished.”

“After fifteen minutes,” Priya says, surprising herself with how firm it sounds.

Sunita doesn’t argue. She is the kind of woman who respects a timer once she understands it is serious.

When the alarm rings, Priya stops.

Her fingers want to keep going, but she unplugs the keyboard anyway, because she is practicing something else too: stopping when she said she would.

She folds the little connector cable into its packet and puts it in the plastic folder for a moment—then laughs at herself.

A connector is not a document.

But she understands the feeling. If something is important, it goes in the folder. It becomes safe.

She leaves it there anyway.

In the courtyard, Sunita pours chai into steel tumblers and slides one toward Rakesh’s sleeping form without waking him. Tea near his bed is the family’s quiet language.

Arjun appears, hair sticking up as if even his scalp is annoyed by the cold.

“Saturday,” he declares, like it is an invention.

“Brush your teeth,” Sunita says.

Arjun groans and shuffles away.

Priya wraps her scarf high and goes out with a cloth bag for vegetables.

Fog makes the lane feel shorter and longer at the same time. Things arrive late, and then suddenly they are right in front of you: a buffalo’s back, shining with damp; a woman carrying fodder; a schoolboy who looks surprised to be awake on a Saturday.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is present, as always, like a landmark.

He is pouring chai and listening to a small radio that keeps trying to be cheerful.

The newsreader says something about delays and cancellations.

“Trains,” Chai Uncle announces to no one in particular. “Fog has eaten trains also. Winter is very greedy.”

A man on the bench shakes his phone. “Northern Railway cancelled many, they said. From December to February.”

Priya listens with half an ear. Trains are a world that passes near her but does not belong to her daily life. Still, the idea that fog can cancel something as big as a train makes her respect the weather’s power.

Chai Uncle looks at her scarf and says, “Today you are going to become computer madam?”

Priya smiles. “Only vegetables today.”

“Vegetables also need typing,” he says, and laughs at his own joke.

She buys coriander and potatoes from the market lane, bargaining lightly because Sunita expects her to try. Her fingers sting in the cold when she touches the wet greens.

Back home, Sunita is kneading dough.

Priya places the coriander down like a trophy.

Sunita nods once, approval delivered without ceremony.

Then, as if remembering an unfinished sentence, Sunita says, “Your father’s phone is making noise.”

Priya looks toward the charpai.

Rakesh’s phone is vibrating on the floor, stubbornly, like it has decided this is not a day for sleep.

Priya picks it up.

A message from the warehouse group.

She doesn’t understand every word, but she understands enough: fog, delayed, report later.

Sunita watches her face.

“What is it?”

“Fog,” Priya says. “They are saying come late. Or maybe… they will change.”

Sunita makes a small annoyed sound again, aimed at the fog like it can hear.

Rakesh stirs.

He blinks up at them, face tired and soft.

“What happened?” he asks.

Priya hands him the phone.

He squints at the message, reading slowly.

“Supervisor says don’t rush,” he says. Then he sits up with the reluctant movement of someone who has already spent his energy.

He begins typing a reply with two thumbs.

His thumbs are large and impatient. The letters come out wrong.

Rakesh mutters under his breath, deletes, tries again.

Priya watches for a second, then says carefully, “I can type.”

Rakesh looks at her.

It is not disbelief. It is the strange new respect of someone noticing a skill becoming real.

“Type then,” he says, and hands her the phone like he is handing her a tool from his own work.

Priya’s stomach tightens.

Typing to Sana is one thing.

Typing to a supervisor is another.

Words can travel and come back with consequences.

She goes to her room and brings the keyboard.

Sunita follows her, curious now.

Priya plugs the keyboard into Rakesh’s phone with the OTG connector.

For a second she worries it will not work on his phone.

Then the message appears again: Physical keyboard connected.

Connected.

She opens the chat.

The supervisor’s last message sits there like a bell waiting to be answered.

Rakesh says, “Write: I will come, but bus is late. Fog.”

Priya looks at the blank reply box.

She types, slowly, in simple English because that is what the group uses.

Sir, bus is late because very dense fog. I will reach a little late. I am coming.

She reads it.

She wants to add apology, remove apology, add another line, remove another line.

She hears Sharma Ji’s voice in her head: Don’t play. Practice.

She presses send.

The message goes.

Rakesh stares at it.

He nods once, like a stamp.

“Good,” he says.

Sunita’s eyes go to Priya’s hands on the keys.

Priya can feel her mother doing her quiet calculations: money, time, trouble, possibility.

After a minute, the supervisor replies with a short thumbs-up.

Rakesh exhales.

It is a small thing.

But the relief in the courtyard is real, like the first warm patch of sun that appears on a wall in winter.

Rakesh drinks his chai and rests back down.

“Wake me at eleven,” he says. “If fog becomes less, I will go.”

Sunita agrees.

Priya carries the keyboard back to her room, careful again, like it can break if she is careless.

By afternoon, the fog thins and thickens in waves, never fully leaving.

At four, Sana arrives with her scarf pulled up, cheeks pink from the cold.

She holds up a notebook like a weapon.

“Study,” she announces.

Priya makes tea. They sit near the doorway where light is best, because the room feels too dark in winter.

Sana flips through notes and points at a paragraph.

“Read,” she says.

Priya reads aloud, halting at English words and letting Sana correct her without making it feel like a wound.

When Sana pauses to drink tea, she looks at Priya’s keyboard.

“You really bought,” Sana says, impressed.

Priya nods, trying not to show too much pride.

Sana grins. “Now type my name.”

Priya rolls her eyes. “No.”

Sana laughs and then, softer, says, “Good. You are doing it. You are not just talking.

And you typed for your father?”

Priya blinks. “How do you know?”

Sana waves her phone. “Arjun sent voice note. He said: Didi typed like office—like a real office.”

Priya groans.

Arjun has made her into news.

Sana’s laughter fills the small room, bright as a match.

When Sana leaves before evening, Priya walks her to the lane.

The fog is back again, gently pushing the world into softer edges.

On the way back, Priya looks at her phone.

No new portal messages.

No new proofs.

Just the small fact that her words reached someone and returned as a thumbs-up.

At night, she plugs in the keyboard again.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Not because she is afraid of doing more.

Because she wants to be the kind of person who can do a small thing every day and trust it will grow.

Outside, the fog presses its face to the courtyard.

Inside, Priya’s hands move in clean, steady clicks.

And for once, the day ends without her needing to check anything twice.