The Paper Tray

Wednesday arrives with the kind of fog that doesn’t look dramatic until you try to cross it.

From the doorway, Priya can see the neem tree only in parts: a dark branch, then nothing, then another branch floating like it belongs to a different morning. Somewhere beyond, a bike coughs into life and disappears as if it has been swallowed.

Sunita says, not to Priya exactly but to the air, “Aaj bhi kohra (today also fog).” She pulls her shawl tighter and reaches for the kettle.

Priya checks the time on her phone.

08:06.

Ten o’clock isn’t early, but the road has its own mood on fog days. Autos drive as if they’re listening for the world instead of looking at it.

She sits on the edge of the cot and opens her plastic folder. The Aadhaar copies are there—four, because she has learned that documents breed when nobody is watching. The photocopy paper feels slightly warm from yesterday, as if it still remembers the shop’s printer.

She slides two copies out and keeps two inside.

Just in case.

Her pen is in the notebook pocket. She tests it on the last page: one neat line, no skipping.

Arjun appears in the doorway, hair standing in un-foggy directions. “Madam going office?” he says, voice thick with sleep.

“Clinic,” Priya says.

“Same-same,” Arjun replies, and yawns so wide it looks like he might pull the fog in.

Sunita puts a roti on a plate and then adds another without being asked. A little aloo sabzi, a small pickle. She wraps it in newspaper and slides it into Priya’s bag like it’s a secret.

“Eat if you get time,” she says. “Don’t be shy to drink water. And—”

“I will ask if number not clear,” Priya recites.

Sunita gives her a look that is half relief and half warning. “And don’t hurry because of people’s faces. Your hand will shake and then you will do mistake.”

Priya nods. She likes the way Sunita says it: do mistake—like it’s a thing you can accidentally pick up from the road.

From the inner room, there is a soft movement—Rakesh shifting in sleep. He’s been on and off night shifts like a lantern that won’t decide to stay lit.

Priya stands very still for a moment, listening.

Rakesh’s voice comes, low and rough. “Ja rahi hai (you’re going)?”

Priya steps closer to the doorway. “Haan (yes). Ten.”

He doesn’t sit up. He just makes a sound that means he heard her, and then: “Phone charge.”

Priya checks automatically. Eighty-one percent.

“Okay,” she says softly.

It’s not a blessing exactly, but it lands in her chest like one.

Before leaving, she plugs her keyboard into her phone for five minutes—just enough to type the six digits once, slowly.

226301.

The numbers sit on the screen, polite and straight.

She unplugs, zips her bag, and steps out.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle is already in motion, rinsing glasses with the speed of someone who has made peace with repetition.

He sees Priya and lifts his chin. “Aaj trial? (trial today?)”

Priya’s stomach does a small flip at the word trial coming from his mouth as casually as chai.

“Yes,” she says. “Half day. Ten.”

Chai Uncle pours her a half glass without asking. “Fog is making people blind and brave,” he says. “Drink. Throat stays warm, courage also.”

A man nearby reads from his phone, as if he is the morning’s newspaper. “Visibility fifty to two hundred metre,” he announces in English-heavy Hindi, proud of the numbers. “Lucknow-Kanpur side.”

“Fifty metre?” another man repeats, offended. “My wife can see my mistakes from fifty metre.”

Someone laughs. Priya laughs too, but it comes out quieter than she expects.

She pays, warms her fingers on the glass, and watches a shared auto fill. When it’s her turn, she sits tucked in the back, bag on her lap, knees pulled in.

The auto moves slowly, horn used like a question. The fog makes the world smaller: a pair of headlights, a tree trunk, the sudden shape of a cow that appears like a decision.

By the time they reach the Lucknow side roads, the fog thins slightly, but the cold stays.

The clinic board shows up late, as if it’s shy.

Inside, the desk woman is already there, hair neatly pinned, pen moving over the register like it knows where to go.

She looks up. “You came on time.”

Priya exhales without realizing she was holding the breath. “Yes, madam.”

“Sit,” the woman says. Then, immediately: “No, don’t sit. Come here.”

Priya stands and comes closer, heart quick.

The woman points at the computer. “This is registration. You will fill in computer also. If printer stops, you tell me. Don’t keep pressing button like panic.”

Priya nods, eyes on the monitor. It’s not new—she has stared at screens in Sharma Ji’s shop for weeks—but this screen feels different. It has consequences.

The woman slides a small stack of forms toward her. “Keep these. And keep pen. If doctor asks file, you find. Don’t lose paper.”

Paper. Priya thinks: I am not losing paper. Paper loses me.

A patient comes in almost on cue, a young man with a scarf around his mouth and a familiar impatience.

“Name,” the desk woman says, not looking up.

The man says it.

Priya writes it in the register first, then opens a blank entry on the computer. The keyboard under her fingers is slightly different from Sharma Ji’s—keys a little flatter, space bar louder. But F and J still have bumps.

Small promises, she thinks, and starts typing.

At mobile number, the man throws digits fast.

Priya catches five, loses two.

Her throat tightens.

She remembers Sunita’s line about faces. She looks up.

“Number not clear—please tell again,” she says.

The man pauses. He looks annoyed for half a second, then repeats it slower, as if he is also tired of everyone guessing his life wrong.

Priya types it.

The desk woman’s pen keeps moving. She doesn’t praise. She doesn’t scold. She just lets it be normal.

That becomes its own kind of comfort.

The morning turns into a rhythm: someone coughs, someone complains about the cold, someone’s child cries and is bribed with a toffee. The printer makes small hungry sounds and spits out slips.

Once, it refuses.

Priya presses print. Nothing.

She checks the screen, then the cable, then the paper tray.

The tray is half-open, a sheet stuck at an angle like a tongue.

Her hands hesitate.

The desk woman glances over. “Paper jam. Pull slowly. Not like you are tearing roti.”

Priya smiles despite herself. She grips the paper gently and pulls. The sheet slides out with a soft rip, not fully torn.

She closes the tray.

The printer coughs, thinks, and then prints.

A small victory, but it warms her more than the chai.

By eleven, the doctor arrives. Priya doesn’t look at him directly for long—he is the kind of person who carries his own weather. He nods at the desk woman, says something quick, and disappears into the inner room.

The waiting area fills faster after that.

A grandmother comes with a younger woman who speaks for her. The grandmother’s hands are stained yellow with turmeric; she holds her shawl at her chin like she is trying to keep her breath from escaping.

The younger woman gives details quickly.

Priya types, and at the address box she asks, “Pin code?”

The younger woman blinks, then rattles off a six-digit number.

Priya types it and then, because the fog has taught her to distrust her own first sighting, she repeats it back.

“Two-two-six…?”

“Sixteen,” the woman says. “Lucknow.”

Priya feels a tiny jolt—the danger of writing her six digits into someone else’s box.

She corrects it before it becomes a mistake.

After that, she keeps noticing pin codes like they are small signatures. Different six-digit families, living in the same waiting room.

At noon, the desk woman finally says, “Eat five minute. Then again.”

Priya opens her bag and unrolls Sunita’s roti. The newspaper is warm from being carried close to her body. She takes a bite and tastes home—aloo, salt, a little chilli that wakes her tongue up.

The desk woman drinks tea from a steel tumbler and watches the waiting room with the calm of someone who has seen the same day many times.

“You have PAN?” she asks suddenly.

Priya swallows. “No, madam.”

“Okay,” the woman says, as if PAN is a weather condition some people have and some don’t. “Tomorrow you bring one photo also. Passport size. And bring one more copy Aadhaar.”

Priya nods and immediately makes the list in her head. Photo. One more copy. Don’t forget.

After lunch, the work feels heavier—not because she is tired, but because she is more aware. She starts noticing her own speed, the way her fingers pause when someone speaks too fast. She starts noticing the line behind the current patient.

A man complains, “Kitna time (how much time)?”

The desk woman replies, “If you want fast, go to fast-food. Sit.”

The waiting room laughs, even the man, a little.

Priya’s shoulders drop by one inch.

At one-thirty, the desk woman looks at the clock and then at Priya. “Okay. You can go. Tomorrow same time. Ten.”

Priya stands so quickly her chair squeaks.

The desk woman opens the drawer, counts notes without drama, and places them on the table.

“Two hundred,” she says. “Travel also. Trial.”

Priya stares at the notes. Two hundred is not a salary, not yet. But it is also not nothing. It is proof that her morning mattered.

“Thank you,” she says, and her voice comes out steadier than she feels.

Outside, the fog has lifted into a pale winter light. The road looks ordinary again, as if it was never mysterious.

On the way back, Priya stops at the same small photocopy shop and gets one more Aadhaar copy because the desk woman’s drawer voice is still in her ears: tomorrow bring.

She also asks for passport photos.

The photo studio man tells her, “Stand straight. Look here.”

Priya looks at the camera like it is a small exam and tries not to smile too hard.

By the time she reaches home, the courtyard smells of afternoon—lentils cooking, dust warmed by sun, the faint detergent of dried clothes.

Sunita is at the threshold, as if she has been waiting without admitting it.

Priya pulls the two notes out of her bag.

Sunita’s eyes go to them first, then to Priya’s face.

“They gave?” Sunita asks.

“Trial,” Priya says. “Two hundred. Tomorrow also.”

Sunita takes the notes and smooths them on her palm, not counting—just feeling. Then she tucks them into the tin where she keeps the household’s small truths.

“Achha (okay),” she says, and it holds a whole sentence: good, keep going, don’t get scared.

Arjun appears, sees Priya’s passport photo strip, and whistles. “Didi (big sister) looking like official person.”

Priya throws the photo at him. He catches it carefully, because even in teasing he knows what paper costs.

Later, when the evening comes and the kettle starts complaining again, Priya sits with her phone and keyboard.

She types a new list.

tomorrow: clinic 10

carry: aadhaar copy (1), photo (2), pen

Then she adds, because she can’t help it now:

don’t guess. ask.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

The keys click like small footsteps on a clean floor.

Outside, the fog begins to creep back in, but inside, Priya’s hands know where they are.