The Receipt Number

Saturday morning begins with a fog that has forgotten how to be dramatic.

It is not the thick white wall from earlier in the month. It is only a thin mist sitting in the lane like someone who has come to visit and is waiting politely to be noticed. The air is still cold, but it has lost its sharpness; even the hand pump’s metal handle doesn’t bite her palm the way it did last week.

Priya stands by the courtyard door and watches the neem leaves tremble in a small, lazy wind. Somewhere far, a train horn sounds clearer than usual, as if the world has quietly wiped its glasses.

Inside, Sunita is already moving—stove, kettle, steel tumbler—her morning weather. Arjun is sitting cross-legged on the floor with his school notebook open, mouthing something under his breath like a prayer.

“Vande… Vande…” he says, then stops and frowns. “Where is the line after ‘sujalam’?”

Priya pours water into the kettle and says, “It will come if you stop chewing it.”

Arjun looks up, offended. “I am not chewing. I am practicing.”

Sunita laughs once, the quick laugh she saves for harmless fights.

Priya thinks of her own line from last night—written in pen, not typed.

Monday: ten to two. Don’t guess.

The words sit somewhere behind her ribs, solid.

Today there is no clinic.

And yet the clinic is still here, in the way she checks the clock without meaning to, in the way her plastic folder feels heavier even when it is only paper.

On the shelf above the trunk, her keyboard is back in its usual place. The marigold petals from yesterday are still stuck between two keys—tiny yellow commas refusing to leave.

Priya runs her finger along the edge of the keyboard and then pulls her hand back, as if touching it is like touching a new responsibility.

Sunita notices.

“Today you will do that PAN thing,” she says, not asking.

Priya nods. “Haan (yes). If Sharma Ji has time.”

Sunita’s face does its careful calculation. “How much money for it?”

Priya hesitates. This is the part that makes her feel both grown and childish—asking for permission and giving an account.

“I will take from yesterday’s three hundred,” she says. “Only small.”

Sunita doesn’t say yes immediately. She stirs the chai with the seriousness of a person stirring the household budget. Then she says, “Go early. If server is slow, you will stand there all day.”

Arjun looks up. “PAN is like Aadhaar?”

“PAN is like Aadhaar for money people,” Priya tells him.

Arjun makes a face like money people are a separate species. “Then you will become money woman.”

Priya flicks his ear lightly. “First you become school boy who knows full song.”

She wraps her dupatta around her shoulders, tucks her plastic folder under her arm, and steps out.

The lane smells like damp earth that has been warmed just a little. Someone has swept and the dust has settled politely instead of flying back into the air.

Near the bus stand, the tea stall is already awake.

Chai Uncle is pouring chai with one hand and arguing with a man with the other. A small radio tied to a nail is talking in a steady, official voice.

“…Balika Diwas…” the radio says, and then something about government schemes.

Priya pauses.

National Girl Child Day.

She has heard of it before—some day that appears in the newspaper and then disappears again. Today the words feel strange. She is twenty-two. She is going to apply for a PAN card and start daily work at a clinic. And still the radio is calling her a balika (girl).

Chai Uncle sees her standing and grins.

“Aaj Balika Diwas hai (Today is Girl Child Day),” he declares, as if he himself has invented it. “So, Priya beti (daughter), chai free?”

Priya rolls her eyes. “You will make my day and also your profit.”

He laughs and pours her half a glass anyway—his idea of generosity is always half, so you come back for the other half.

“Where going so serious?” he asks.

“PAN,” Priya says.

Chai Uncle makes a sympathetic sound. “Aha. Big people card.”

She warms her fingers on the glass and says, “It is only paper.”

“Paper is never only paper,” Chai Uncle says, as if he is giving wisdom along with ginger. “Paper decides whether you are standing outside or sitting inside.”

Priya thinks of the clinic desk, the register, the stapled photo, the way the printer obeyed when she put the paper tray back correctly.

She drinks quickly and heads to Sharma Ji’s shop.

The cyber shop is not yet crowded, but it is already preparing to be. The printer is making its waking-up noises. The ceiling fan is rotating lazily, not for cooling, but out of habit.

Sharma Ji looks up from his phone.

“PAN?” he says, like he has been expecting the word.

“Yes,” Priya says. “Clinic madam said bring receipt next week.”

He makes a face that says every madam in the world makes everyone run. Then he pushes a stool toward her.

“Sit. Take out Aadhaar copy and photo,” he says.

Priya opens her folder carefully. The papers make a familiar, comforting sound—the soft scrape of plastic against paper.

She places the photocopies and the small passport photos on the counter. Her own face looks back at her, too serious for a photograph.

Sharma Ji starts typing with quick, angry fingers. A government website loads slowly, as if it has to think about whether it wants to accept her existence.

“Server is slow,” he mutters.

Priya almost laughs. Some things are so reliable you could write them in the calendar.

On the screen, boxes appear: name, father’s name, date of birth, address.

“Your father’s name full?” Sharma Ji asks, without looking at her.

“Rakesh Verma,” Priya says.

“Middle name?”

“No,” she says.

He types. Then he pauses at a box.

“Email?”

Priya’s stomach tightens. She has a WhatsApp number, a phone with a cracked corner, a folder of documents, and now a keyboard—she has many proofs. But email is a different kind of proof, a thing that feels like it belongs to the city.

“I don’t have,” she admits.

Sharma Ji clicks his tongue. “Everyone has. They just don’t know.”

Priya looks at the screen. The email box blinks patiently, waiting for something that is not a mistake.

“What to do?” she asks.

Sharma Ji leans back and sighs like he is about to do charity work. “We make. But you remember password. Otherwise later OTP will come and you will cry.”

“I will not cry,” Priya says immediately, and then realises she sounds like Arjun.

Sharma Ji snorts. “Haan, you will not. You will only come and say ‘Sharma Ji, please’. Same thing.”

Priya presses her lips together to stop smiling.

He opens a new tab.

“Tell,” he says. “Username. Something simple.”

Priya thinks of how Sana writes her name in English on college forms—clean and confident. She thinks of the pin code she has memorised like a small mantra. She thinks of the way the clinic desk woman says don’t guess.

She gives Sharma Ji a name that is her own and also a little disguised: her first name, her surname, and three numbers she will not forget.

Sharma Ji types it and then the screen says something like already taken.

“See?” Sharma Ji says, triumphantly, as if the internet itself is agreeing with him.

They try again, adding a dot, removing a dot, adding another number.

Finally a green tick appears.

Priya feels an unreasonable relief. A green tick is a small thing. But she has learned that small things are what hold up the day.

Then the screen asks for a phone number to send a code.

Sharma Ji says, “OTP will come. Tell fast when it comes.”

Priya watches her phone like it is a kettle about to whistle.

One minute passes.

Two minutes.

Sharma Ji drums his fingers on the desk.

The shop door opens and a man comes in, holding a sheet of paper, asking loudly about a train ticket. Sharma Ji waves him away without answering.

At last, Priya’s phone buzzes.

A message arrives with six digits.

Priya reads them once, then again. The digits are so easy to mis-say. The clinic rule echoes in her head.

She doesn’t guess.

She reads slowly, and after each two numbers she pauses, like she is placing stones carefully in a straight line.

Sharma Ji types them, and the email page accepts her.

“Good,” Sharma Ji says, begrudgingly.

The word lands like a coin.

After that, the PAN form feels less like a mountain and more like a long lane. Still annoying, but you can walk it.

They scan her photo. Sharma Ji makes her sign on a blank paper, then scans that too, complaining the whole time about ink thickness.

A payment page loads.

“UPI?” Sharma Ji asks.

Priya nods and opens her UPI app. For one moment she expects it to fail—like a habit expecting rain.

But the network holds.

The payment goes through.

A new page appears with a long number at the top.

Sharma Ji points at it with his pen. “This is acknowledgement. Keep.”

The number is longer than six digits. Longer than her pin code. Longer than anything she has had to remember so far.

Priya feels a flicker of fear.

“What if I lose?” she asks.

“You won’t lose if you print,” Sharma Ji says. He clicks print with the satisfied air of a man who believes in paper more than people.

The printer makes its familiar grinding sound, then releases a warm sheet.

On the page, her name sits in English letters. Her father’s name sits below it. Her address sits in a long line that makes Mohanlalganj look almost like a proper place.

And at the top, the acknowledgement number sits like a small crown.

Sharma Ji hands it to her. “Now don’t fold like samosa,” he says. “Keep flat.”

Priya slides it into her plastic folder carefully, between her BA confirmation slip and the clinic’s photocopied Aadhaar.

Paper making paper.

On the way home, the mist has lifted fully.

The sky is clear in a way that makes everything look slightly exposed. The sun has come out, not hot, but honest. People are standing in doorways longer than usual, letting the warmth touch their faces without rushing.

Priya walks slower.

She feels the acknowledgement slip in her folder like a new weight, and also like a new protection.

At home, Sunita is sitting on the floor with a steel dabba open, counting out something—rice for lunch, or perhaps only worry.

Priya sits beside her and places the printed page in her mother’s hand.

Sunita reads slowly, her lips moving without sound.

“Name correct?” she asks.

“Yes,” Priya says.

“Father name correct?”

“Yes.”

Sunita nods and slides the page back into the folder, then puts the folder on the shelf with the careful finality of a person putting money into a box.

“Achha (okay),” she says. “Now next week you show madam.”

Arjun appears, notebook in hand, singing badly on purpose.

“Vande Mataram…” he starts.

Priya looks at him and says, “Come. I will type the lyrics for you.”

Arjun’s eyes widen. “On your keyboard?”

“Yes,” Priya says.

She plugs the keyboard into her phone with the OTG adapter. The small message pops up: Physical keyboard connected. It still makes her feel like she has performed a magic trick, even though it is only a wire.

She opens a blank note and types the first line carefully, keeping her fingers light.

Arjun leans over her shoulder, reading.

Sunita watches for a moment and then goes back to her work, satisfied in the quiet way she gets satisfied—by seeing something practical happen without drama.

Priya sets a timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Not for practice today.

For life.

When the timer rings, she stops.

Outside, evening begins to gather, and the air cools again. Somewhere in the lane a child laughs, and somewhere else a pressure cooker whistles.

Priya looks at the typed lines on her phone screen. They are not perfect. There are spaces she will correct later.

But the words are there.

The receipt number is in her folder.

Monday has a time.

And for now, that is enough.