Two Alarms

Sunday arrives looking almost innocent.

The fog has been thinning for days, and today the lane does not hide behind white curtains at all. The neem leaves show their dusty green plainly. A thin winter sun sits in the sky like a coin someone has forgotten to pick up.

Priya wakes before anyone calls her.

For a moment she lies still and listens to the house doing its smallest sounds: Sunita’s bangles clinking once in the kitchen, a pressure cooker lid being moved, Arjun turning a page with the seriousness of a person turning destiny. Somewhere outside, a cycle bell rings and then gets swallowed by distance.

It is Sunday.

In their house, Sunday means two things at the same time: rest and preparation.

Priya sits up and automatically reaches for her phone.

Not to check any portal today. Not to refresh any status.

To check the clock.

6:58.

Monday is sitting inside the numbers already.

She swings her feet down, pulls her shawl around her shoulders, and goes to the shelf above the trunk. The plastic folder is there, fat with paper like a book that only she reads. She takes it down and opens it the way some people open a box of sweets—carefully, with a small fear of dropping something.

The PAN acknowledgement is still lying flat between the BA confirmation slip and an Aadhaar copy. Sharma Ji’s warning echoes in her head.

Don’t fold like samosa.

She smiles once, despite herself.

On the floor, next to the folder, her keyboard waits in its usual place. The yellow marigold petal stuck between two keys is still there. It has dried now, light as a thin paper.

Priya touches the F and J bumps the way she touches the edge of a new idea.

In the kitchen, Sunita says without turning, “Uth gayi (you’re up).”

Priya answers, “Haan (yes),” and the word comes out soft.

Sunita is making chai. The milk boils over once, just a little, as if the stove is also waking reluctantly.

Arjun is sitting on the floor with his notebook and the phone propped beside him. The typed lyrics Priya made yesterday are open on the screen.

He is whisper-singing with great concentration, and still getting it wrong.

“Vande Mataram… sujalam…,” he says, and then mutters, “safalam… malayaja… what is this? It sounds like a medicine.”

Priya sits beside him and points with her finger. “Read slow. It is not a race.”

Arjun sighs like she is ruining his artistic flow. “Tomorrow everyone will sing loudly. Nobody will read slow.”

“Then tomorrow everyone will sing wrong loudly,” Priya says.

Sunita laughs once. “Let him. Republic Day will not cancel because Arjun doesn’t know one line.”

The words—Republic Day—sit in Priya’s mind like a calendar page.

Tomorrow.

A national holiday.

And also, her first day of coming daily to the clinic.

The clinic desk woman has said it plainly: Monday, ten to two.

Priya thinks of the clinic’s register, the printer, the quick faces, the way the woman tests people by making them do real work. She has not said, “Except holidays.”

Priya does not want to be the person who starts a new job by assuming she can rest.

After chai, Sunita pulls out a steel plate of clothes that have been washed and dried—Sunday laundry, folded into rectangles.

“Wear this tomorrow,” she says, handing Priya a plain salwar-kameez and a sweater that still smells faintly of sun.

Priya holds the sweater to her face for a second.

It smells like the roof.

Sunita points with her chin toward the folder. “You will take that. Flat.”

“I will,” Priya says.

“And take two pens,” Sunita adds.

Priya looks up.

“One pen is enough,” she says automatically.

Sunita gives her a look that is half mother and half accountant. “One pen is enough until the pen decides it is tired. Take two.”

Priya nods. “Theek hai (okay).”

Rakesh appears at the courtyard door, rubbing his eyes. His face looks like someone has erased him and drawn him again quickly. He has slept, but not fully.

“Tomorrow you are going?” he asks.

Priya pauses. She expects him to say don’t go, it is holiday, or go, don’t miss the chance, but he only asks, as if he is checking the weather.

“Yes,” she says. “They told Monday.”

Rakesh nods slowly. “Go. Reach time pe (on time).”

The phrase is small, but it lands in her chest like a weight that is also support.

After breakfast, Priya spreads her things on the floor the way she spreads vegetables before cutting them.

Plastic folder.

Aadhaar copies.

The little passport photos that remain.

The ₹300 from Vasant Panchami, folded and refolded.

Two pens—one blue, one black.

A small hair clip that always disappears when she needs it.

And her phone, with the OTG adapter tucked into its cover like a secret tool.

She looks at the pile and thinks: this is what a job looks like.

Not the job itself.

The things that allow the job to happen.

She opens her notebook and writes a list, because her hand cannot help itself.

MONDAY

10–2

• folder (flat)
• 2 pens
• water bottle
• ₹ for bus
• don’t guess

She reads the last line again.

Don’t guess.

It is becoming a prayer.

Her phone buzzes.

A small notification.

New mail.

Priya stares at it.

Mail.

Yesterday she watched Sharma Ji make her email like he was making a photocopy—quick, impatient, inevitable. Today, the email is behaving like a real thing. It is arriving.

She opens it with a careful thumb.

The screen shows a subject line in English. She reads it slowly, moving her lips.

“Welcome…”

Below it, a long paragraph sits like a wall of small letters.

Priya scrolls. The words talk about security, about keeping passwords safe, about “terms.” She doesn’t understand everything, but she understands one thing clearly: the email is talking to her as if she is a person who knows what she is doing.

It is a strange feeling.

She switches to WhatsApp and sends Sana a typed message.

Didi, I got first mail. It says welcome. Is it ok?

She hesitates at “Didi.” Sana is not her sister, but sometimes Priya calls her that when she wants reassurance without begging.

She presses send.

The blue tick appears a minute later.

Sana replies immediately, also typed.

Haan ok. Everyone gets welcome mail. Don’t click random links. Keep password safe. Tomorrow you going clinic?

Priya’s fingers hover.

She types, deletes, types again.

Finally she writes:

Yes. Even holiday. Better go.

Sana sends a voice note this time. Priya plays it near her ear.

“Pagal (crazy),” Sana says affectionately. “But haan, go. If closed you will come back. Take water. Take biscuit. And keep receipt number paper safe. Flat. Like you keep all things.”

Priya smiles at the last part.

Sana knows her too well.

By late morning, Arjun has gone out for practice on the school ground. He has his white shirt on, tucked in with unusual obedience, because today he wants to look like a person in a parade.

As he leaves, he sings loudly on purpose, to show the lane he is patriotic.

“Vande Mataram!” he shouts.

A neighbour’s aunt scolds him from a doorway. “Arre, slowly! My baby is sleeping.”

Arjun salutes her badly and runs.

Priya watches him go and feels a small softness.

He is sixteen and still running.

She is twenty-two and making piles of paper.

In the afternoon, the sun warms the courtyard enough that Sunita sits in the doorway and sorts lentils in a steel tray. The sound—tiny clicks of stones removed—is as steady as a clock.

Priya takes her keyboard and connects it to her phone.

The message appears again: Physical keyboard connected.

She sets a timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Today she does not practice random letters.

She practices her own future.

She opens a blank note and types the address of the clinic the way she remembers it—canal road, the turn, the small signboard. She types “10:00” again and again, not because she will forget, but because the numbers feel like they need to become familiar in her fingers.

Then she types the sentence Sharma Ji taught her:

Number not clear. Please tell again.

She types it three times.

The words look stiff on the screen, like someone wearing a new shirt.

But they are her words now.

When the timer rings, she stops immediately.

Sunita notices and nods once, approving. In their house, stopping on time is a kind of discipline that people respect.

Evening comes early, as it does in January.

The lane fills with small movements: men returning with vegetables, children playing with paper flags they have bought for two rupees, a scooter passing with a tricolour ribbon tied to its handle.

From somewhere, a loudspeaker plays a patriotic song in a crackling voice.

Priya goes to the roof for a minute, not because she has to, but because Sunday allows it.

The sky is clear in a way that makes the stars feel close, waiting.

She thinks of tomorrow again.

She thinks of the clinic desk woman’s face when she says, “Come daily.”

She thinks of herself standing at the bus stand with her folder pressed flat against her body like a shield.

She thinks of the welcome mail sitting in her phone like a new door.

Back downstairs, she lays out her clothes for the morning.

She puts the folder on top of them, so it cannot be forgotten.

She puts two pens beside the folder, as if they are small guards.

Then she opens her phone’s clock.

She sets an alarm.

7:30.

She stares at it.

It looks too early. It looks like someone else’s life.

Then she sets another one.

7:45.

Two alarms.

Not because she doesn’t trust herself.

Because she is learning that trust can be practical.

When she lies down, the house is already shifting into night quiet. Rakesh is coughing once, then settling. Sunita is turning off the last light.

Priya looks at the ceiling and feels the strange new weight of tomorrow.

It is not fear, exactly.

It is the feeling of something beginning.

In the darkness, her phone screen glows once, as if to check she is still there.

Two alarms wait.

A receipt number rests flat in its folder.

And somewhere in the lane, a boy sings “Vande Mataram” wrong but happily.

Priya closes her eyes and lets the ordinary comfort of that wrongness settle her.

For now, that is enough.