Six Digits

Tuesday morning has a thin, stubborn cold to it—less dramatic than the last week’s fog-wall, but sharper in the bones.

Priya feels it when she swings her legs off the cot and the floor meets her feet like a surprise. The courtyard is quiet in the way it gets when Rakesh is sleeping after a night shift: the gate latch is handled gently, the steel tumbler is set down as if it might wake him, even Arjun’s throat-clearing sounds rehearsed.

Sunita is already moving, the kind of moving that doesn’t make noise but changes the whole house anyway. There is tea, there is yesterday’s folded quilts on the rope, there is a pot warming because the morning insists on something hot.

Priya sits with her phone for one breath—long enough to see there is no new portal message, no sudden miracle of bureaucracy. Then she puts the phone down.

The keyboard is on the shelf beside her plastic folder, wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper like a piece of careful furniture. She unwraps it and runs her fingers along the keys.

F. J.

Two bumps, like tiny promises.

She plugs it into the OTG adapter and then into her phone.

Physical keyboard connected.

The words still make her smile. The phone sounds like a polite official.

She sets a timer for fifteen minutes.

Today, she chooses numbers.

Not because numbers are easier—numbers are slippery in their own way—but because yesterday Sharma Ji said “especially numbers” in the tone people use for rules you don’t get to argue with.

The practice site gives her a line with dates and phone-like strings. Priya types slowly, forcing herself to look at the screen and not at her hands. When she makes a mistake, she fixes it. When the timer rings, she stops.

Stopping on time is still hard.

She unplugs the keyboard and holds the OTG adapter for a second before putting it back in its packet, in its place, inside the folder.

Sunita sets a roti on her plate. “You are going today?”

Priya nods.

“Sharma Ji said go and ask,” Sunita continues, as if they are discussing going to buy potatoes. “Then go. Only—go when it is not foggy like milk. Don’t get stuck on road.”

“It’s clearer,” Priya says, though she hasn’t even stepped outside yet.

Sunita makes a small sound that means don’t argue with me in the morning. “And wear your clean sweater. The grey one. The maroon one looks like you slept in it.”

Priya laughs softly. “I did sleep in it.”

“Exactly.” Sunita’s mouth twitches, almost a smile. “And don’t talk too much. Ask what you have to ask. Then come back.”

Priya thinks of Sharma Ji’s advice—don’t talk too much—arriving in the same sentence from two different adults like a message being delivered twice to make sure it lands.

Arjun appears, hair damp, comb forgotten. He looks at her as if she is about to leave for a foreign country.

“Didi (big sister) is going for interview,” he announces.

“It’s not interview,” Priya says automatically.

Arjun grins. “Then why you are wearing clean sweater?”

Priya flicks his ear. “Because my mother has eyes.”

Arjun yelps dramatically and then runs to the hand pump, as if performance is also a morning chore.

Before leaving, Priya checks her notebook.

Yesterday’s typed list is now rewritten by hand, because her brain trusts ink more than pixels:

• clinic: go and ask
• carry: notebook, pen, Aadhaar copy?
• ask: vacancy? timing? pay?

She adds a new line and underlines it.

• pin code

It feels strange to write it like a separate object, like a utensil.

But the clinic form yesterday had an ADDRESS box, and she knows how easily an address becomes a story instead of a number.

Outside, the lane is waking in winter layers. A bike passes with a shawl-wrapped rider; a dog shakes itself awake and looks offended by the air.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is there, naturally, as if he is part of the infrastructure.

He sees Priya’s sweater and says, “Office madam?”

Priya rolls her eyes in a way that feels grown-up. “Not office. Clinic.”

“Clinic!” Chai Uncle’s eyebrows rise. “You are becoming computer doctor?”

“I will only type,” Priya says.

Chai Uncle pours chai and says, “Typing also is medicine. For the one who cannot read their own handwriting.”

A radio somewhere nearby is talking in numbers—minimum temperatures, visibility, warnings. A man scrolling his phone reads out loud like he is making announcements for the lane.

“Visibility fifty metres in some places,” he says, proud of the drama. “And Lucknow minimum five-point-something.”

“Five-point-something is enough,” another man replies. “In village, cold doesn’t need decimal.”

Priya warms her hands on the glass, pays, and watches a shared auto fill with bodies like a puzzle being solved.

When she climbs in, she keeps her bag on her lap, hugging it a little. It is not heavy—just a notebook, a pen, a folded photocopy of Aadhaar, and her own nervousness.

The auto rattles toward Lucknow-side roads where the houses sit closer and the signboards multiply. The canal appears briefly—water dark and slow, like it is also conserving warmth.

The clinic is not grand. It is exactly what Sharma Ji’s tone implied: a small place on a busy stretch, with a board that says CLINIC in large letters and smaller words beneath that Priya doesn’t have time to read because the auto drops her and immediately leaves, as if it is allergic to commitment.

Inside, the air smells like Dettol and old paper.

There is a waiting area with plastic chairs. A boy with a bandaged finger is being bribed with a biscuit. An old man is coughing into his shawl as if the shawl can take it and keep quiet.

At the front, behind a desk, a woman is writing something in a register. She is not young, not old—an age that feels like competence.

A computer sits beside her, monitor dull with fingerprints. A small printer is pushed against the wall like a shy animal.

Priya stands for a second too long, then remembers she has come to ask.

“Didi,” she says, then corrects herself quickly. “Madam.”

The woman looks up.

Priya holds her notebook like a shield. “I saw notice—computer operator. Typing and form.”

The woman’s eyes move over Priya in a quick scan that feels like a form being checked for missing fields.

“Where you saw?”

“Market lane,” Priya says. “Torn paper. I took photo.”

“Hmm.” The woman returns to the register for a moment, then looks up again. “You know computer?”

Priya feels the question in her stomach.

She chooses honesty, because yesterday taught her that honesty is a kind of courage you can practice.

“I know typing,” she says. “And filling form. I practice with Sharma Ji cyber.”

The woman’s eyebrows twitch, recognition. “Sharma’s shop near bus stand?”

“Yes.”

She makes a small acha sound, as if Sharma Ji’s existence is its own reference letter.

“Sit,” the woman says, pointing at a chair. “Wait two minutes.”

Priya sits. Her knees bounce once, then stop because she notices her own bouncing.

On the wall near the desk, there is a poster with big digits on it. 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Below it, in Hindi and English, it says something about writing PIN codes clearly.

Priya stares at it.

Pin code.

She thinks of Mohanlalganj’s six digits—226301—lined up like the home row bumps in another language.

The woman returns with a paper.

“Fill this,” she says.

It is a blank patient registration form. Not a sample like Sharma Ji’s. Real clinic paper, with the clinic’s stamp faintly in one corner.

Priya’s heart thumps.

“Now?” she asks before she can stop herself.

“Now,” the woman says, not unkind. “We see you can write neat. One patient will come, you fill. If you do okay, you come tomorrow. Half day. Trial.”

Trial.

The word feels like a metal spoon hitting a steel plate—sharp, real.

Priya nods. “Okay.”

A man is called to the desk. He has a scarf around his mouth and a tired impatience, like his whole day has been made of queues.

The woman gestures to Priya. “Tell her.”

Priya opens the form.

Name. Age. Mobile. Address. Pin.

The man says his name fast.

Priya repeats it back, slower, and writes it carefully in the box, the way Sharma Ji taught her: no guessing, no swallowing syllables just to finish.

When it comes to the mobile number, the man rattles off digits like he is throwing them away.

Priya catches the first four. The next two blur.

Her mouth goes dry.

Then she remembers the sentence.

She looks up and says, “Number not clear—please tell again.”

The man pauses. Looks at her. Then, surprisingly, he repeats it, slower, as if he has been waiting for someone to ask him properly.

Priya writes it.

At Address, he starts giving landmarks. A temple. A turn. A tree.

Priya writes what she can and then asks, “Pin code?”

The man blinks. “Pin?”

Priya points to the box.

He thinks, frowns, then says a number with uncertainty.

The woman behind the desk corrects him without lifting her head. “Write 226016,” she says briskly, and Priya writes it. Lucknow side. Different from her own.

Priya feels a small relief that she didn’t pretend.

Forms are strange. They don’t want your story. They want your digits.

When she finishes, she hands the paper back.

The woman scans it.

Priya holds her breath.

The woman taps one box with her pen. “Here. Write clearly. Don’t join letters.”

Priya nods so fast it is almost funny.

Then the woman says, “Tomorrow you come at ten. Bring two photo copy, Aadhaar. If you have PAN, bring. If not, okay. You will sit and fill, print. Doctor comes around eleven.”

Priya tries to keep her face neutral, like this is all normal.

Inside, something lifts.

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”

Outside, the winter sun has strengthened a little. The fog has retreated to the edges of shade, sulking.

On the way back, Priya stops at a small photocopy shop near the road and gets two extra copies of her Aadhaar made, because she has learned that documents multiply like coriander—if you don’t buy enough, you will need more exactly when the stall is empty.

By the time she reaches home, Sunita is sorting lentils with the calm of a person who cannot afford drama.

Priya stands in the doorway, holding her bag.

Sunita looks up. “Hua (did it happen)?”

“Yes,” Priya says, and then laughs because the word yes feels too simple for what it holds. “They said come tomorrow. Trial. Ten o’clock. Need copies.”

Sunita’s hands pause over the lentils.

Then she resumes. “Good. Eat first.”

Arjun, who has been pretending not to listen, bursts out, “Interview pass!”

Priya throws a cushion at him. He catches it and grins.

Later, in the afternoon warmth that makes everyone forget the morning’s punishment, Priya plugs in her keyboard again.

She opens her notes and types a new list.

tomorrow: clinic 10

carry: aadhaar copies (2), photo? pen

Then she adds, because the poster’s digits are still in her head:

mohanlalganj pin: 226301

Six digits.

She stares at them.

They look steady.

Not like a promise—more like an address.

She sets the timer for fifteen minutes and begins typing the digits again and again, spacing them cleanly, letting the numbers become familiar under her fingers.

When the alarm rings, she stops.

She closes the notes.

In the courtyard, the evening is arriving quietly. A kettle starts to complain. Arjun’s cricket highlights begin from someone’s phone. Rakesh shifts in sleep, his face softer without the day’s worries on it.

Priya sits for a moment with her hands on her lap.

Tomorrow is not written yet.

But six digits are.