One Page

Monday arrives with the kind of cold that doesn’t argue.

It simply sits on everything—on the steel tumbler, on the latch of the gate, on the soap bar that feels like a stone in her palm. Priya wakes before dawn because the house is already awake in its quiet way.

Rakesh has returned from a night shift. The gate has done its soft click, the bicycle has complained once, and then the courtyard has become careful again. Sunita has tea ready without making a performance of it; Arjun turns under his blanket like a person negotiating with fate.

Priya sits up and reaches for her phone.

No new message.

She reaches for the keyboard.

The little OTG connector is tucked in its packet inside her plastic folder, as if it is an admit card for something. She takes it out and smiles at herself. A cable is not a document. But it has become one in her hands: proof that she can connect one thing to another.

She plugs it in.

Physical keyboard connected.

The English words are still slightly slippery, but the feeling is not.

She sets the timer for fifteen minutes.

The practice site offers a line:

please write in capital letters

Priya laughs silently. The phone is already giving instructions like a clerk.

Her fingers begin.

P L E A S E.

The letters appear. The space bar makes clean gaps. A mistake comes—an extra E—then disappears with backspace.

In the courtyard, Sunita calls softly, “Priya, jaldi nikalna (leave early). Sharma Ji will do your test in morning, na?”

“Haan (yes),” Priya calls back, eyes still on the screen.

When the alarm rings, she stops. She unplugs the keyboard even though her hands want to keep going.

Stopping on time is also a skill.

Sunita hands her a roti with aloo sabzi wrapped inside like a pocket. “Eat on the way,” she says.

Priya tucks it into her bag with her notebook.

The notebook feels heavier these days—not because there are more pages, but because there are more lines of her life written in it.

Arjun appears at the doorway, hair standing up.

“Didi is going for exam,” he announces, delighted.

Priya throws him a look. “It’s not exam.”

Arjun grins. “Then why you are nervous?”

Priya wants to deny it.

Instead she adjusts her dupatta (scarf) and says, “Because Sharma Ji likes to find mistakes.”

Sunita snorts. “Mistake is his business.”

Outside, the lane is pale with fog. Not the thick wall of earlier days—more like breath that refuses to leave.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is already there, like a line in a poem that must appear every morning.

He sees Priya and says, “Today is typing competition?”

Priya smiles. “Practice test. One page.”

“One page is nothing,” Chai Uncle says, pouring chai. “But one page can change whole mood.”

A man nearby is scrolling his phone and says to no one, “Lucknow minimum is very low today.”

Another replies, “Always in January. Morning is like punishment, then by afternoon you forget.”

Priya warms her fingers on the glass, pays, and walks toward Sharma Ji’s shop.

The shutter is half up, as if the shop is waking reluctantly.

Inside, the tube light makes everything look honest and tired.

Sharma Ji looks up and says, “Ah. Test day.”

Priya nods.

He points at the chair without being gentle. “Sit.”

He pulls out a sheet of paper from a file—clean, printed, with lines.

“This is typing,” he says. “One page. English. You type same. No extra, no missing. And no ‘tommorow’ spelling.”

Priya’s cheeks warm.

She remembers the blue letters from last night:

tomorrow practice one page

She had fixed it.

But Sharma Ji has a nose for old mistakes.

He places the paper beside the keyboard.

The paragraph is about a clinic. Priya reads it once, silently.

It is plain, but it has words that feel like stones: registration, guardian, address, signature.

Sharma Ji says, “You will not understand every word. You only type. But clinic people will talk these words.”

Priya swallows and places her fingers on the home row.

F. J.

The small bumps feel like someone has placed two grains of rice under her fingertips—tiny and certain.

“Start,” Sharma Ji says.

Priya begins.

She goes slower than she wants to. Her eyes move from paper to screen, paper to screen, like a person crossing a road carefully.

The cursor blinks.

She types:

patient registration form must be filled clearly…

Her hands shake once, then settle.

Outside the shop, someone calls, “Bhaiya, ek photocopy (brother, one photocopy)!”

Sharma Ji shouts back without moving his eyes. “Aao (come). Wait.”

Priya keeps typing.

Halfway down the page, she makes a mistake.

adress

She sees it immediately.

Backspace.

address

The corrected word looks like a small victory.

When she reaches the end of the page, her shoulders loosen as if she has been holding them up with effort.

Sharma Ji steps behind her.

He doesn’t praise. He never praises quickly.

He points with his pen. “Here. You missed one ‘the’. And you typed ‘form’ as ‘from’.”

Priya’s stomach drops.

Then she looks again.

It’s true.

A missing the is invisible until someone points.

She says quietly, “I can fix.”

Sharma Ji grunts, which is his version of permission.

Priya uses the arrow keys slowly, like touching a hot utensil, and corrects the lines.

When she prints the page, the printer whines and then produces a sheet.

Her typed words sit there in black ink, serious and plain.

Sharma Ji reads it with his thumb moving along the lines like a farmer checking grain.

He nods once.

Not happy.

Not angry.

Just: acceptable.

“Now form,” he says.

He pulls out another sheet.

It is a sample form with boxes.

Name:

Age:

Mobile:

Address:

Symptoms:

Date:

Doctor:

There are small squares for Male / Female.

At the bottom there is a line that says Signature.

Priya stares at it.

Typing a paragraph is one kind of work.

A form is another.

A paragraph can hide your confusion inside sentences.

A form asks you for specific truth.

Sharma Ji says, “Clinic will give you this. People will stand and talk. Some will not know their age. Some will not know spelling of their name. You will have to ask. And you will have to not get irritated.”

Priya thinks of her own irritation, how it hides under politeness.

Sharma Ji pushes a small handwritten slip toward her.

It has details in Hindi—an example, not a real patient:

“Rekha… 38… 9… 8… 0…”

An address, half in village landmarks.

A symptom: bukhar (fever).

He says, “Fill in English. Like clinic wants.”

Priya’s fingers hover.

She begins.

NAME: REKHA DEVI

AGE: 38

MOBILE: 98—

She pauses.

Sharma Ji says sharply, “Don’t guess. Read properly.”

Priya looks back at the slip. The numbers are messy.

For a second, her old habit rises: make it neat by inventing what you can’t see.

Then she remembers his warning.

She says, almost in a whisper, “This number is not clear.”

Sharma Ji looks at her.

For a moment, Priya thinks he will scold.

Instead he says, “Good. This is correct sentence. In clinic, you will say same. ‘Number not clear. Please tell again.’ You must not be afraid to look stupid.”

Priya’s throat tightens with something that is not quite emotion, not quite relief.

It is the feeling of being allowed to be honest.

Sharma Ji writes the number again, clearer.

Priya types it.

When she reaches ADDRESS, she slows down.

Village addresses are not made for boxes. They are made for people who know the way by neem trees and turns.

She types what she can.

MOHANLALGANJ, LUCKNOW

Near canal road is not her address today, but the words sit in her head anyway.

She fills the symptom.

FEVER

At DOCTOR, she pauses.

Sharma Ji says, “Leave blank. Doctor will decide.”

At the bottom, she types the date.

19/01/2026

The numbers look official.

As if the day itself has put on a clean shirt.

Sharma Ji watches her print the form.

The page comes out.

Boxes. Letters. Neat lines.

It looks like the kind of paper that makes people listen.

Sharma Ji taps the form with his pen. “Not bad,” he says, and in his voice it almost sounds like a compliment.

Priya lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Now what?” she asks.

Sharma Ji leans back on his chair. “Now you don’t become flying madam. You go to that clinic one day. Ask if vacancy is there. If they want operator. If they test, you do. If they say come tomorrow, you come. If they say no, you come back and practice.”

He pauses, then adds, as if remembering he is supposed to be harsh, “And you wear proper. Clean. Don’t talk too much.”

Priya nods quickly. “Okay.”

Outside, the fog is lifting. The road looks like it is waking up properly.

Priya walks home with her printed pages folded inside her notebook.

She does not put them in the plastic folder.

Not yet.

They are not documents.

They are rehearsal.

At home, Sunita is rinsing rice.

Priya sets her bag down and says, “He made me type one page. And fill form.”

Sunita looks up. “How was it?”

Priya opens the notebook and shows her the printed sheet.

Sunita cannot read all the English, but she can read the neatness.

She nods slowly. “Good. Paper should look like it knows what it is saying.”

Arjun leans in. “Show form!”

Priya shows him the boxes.

Arjun points at Symptoms and says, “Write ‘too much homework’.”

Priya flicks his ear lightly.

He yelps with exaggerated pain and then laughs.

Later, when the sun finally warms the courtyard a little, Priya plugs in the keyboard again.

She opens her notes.

She types a small list.

clinic: go and ask

carry: notebook, pen, dupatta, confidence (small)

She stares at the last word.

Confidence.

It still feels too big to carry like a notebook.

So she edits it.

carry: notebook, pen, dupatta, questions

Questions are easier. Questions fit in the pocket.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

And in the soft click of keys, the day settles into something she can hold: one page, done carefully, and another page waiting, blank and possible.