The Open Shutter

The first alarm goes off like a small argument.

7:30.

Priya’s hand comes out of sleep and finds the phone before her eyes do. She taps it quiet and lies still for half a breath, listening for the rest of the house.

Nothing dramatic. No sudden music. Just winter—thin, dry, and a little sharp.

Then the second alarm rings, more politely, as if it is reminding her that she asked for this.

7:45.

Priya sits up.

The air is cold enough that she can feel it on the inside of her nose. January in this part of Uttar Pradesh is like that—mornings that bite a little, afternoons that pretend they didn’t. (Lucknow’s January days usually sit somewhere around a mild, sunny high and a chilly low, the kind that makes you keep a sweater on the chair even when the sun is out.)

From the courtyard, Sunita’s voice comes: “You’re up?”

“Yes,” Priya answers, and her own voice sounds new to her—workday voice.

Today is Monday.

And it is also 26 January.

Republic Day.

In every lane like theirs, that means the same basic things: flags hung on doors, schoolchildren in white shoes, and someone’s loudspeaker making the National Anthem sound like it is coming from inside a tin. It is a big day and also, in Mohanlalganj, a day for small rituals—flag hoisting in schools, a few children marching with too much seriousness, laddoos in thin paper cups. (Across India, Republic Day is marked by flag hoisting ceremonies and parades by armed forces and schoolchildren; those same shapes repeat everywhere, from big roads to small school grounds.)

Priya washes her face at the hand pump and feels the cold water slap her awake properly. She dries her hands on the edge of her dupatta and looks up.

A tiny tricolour flag has been taped to the neighbour’s gate. The tape is already loosening at one corner, like even patriotism has to deal with dust.

Inside, Sunita is making chai. The milk threatens to rise and then behaves. On the stove, the ginger smells brave.

Arjun appears in the doorway wearing his white school shirt, hair damp and combed into obedience. He looks, for once, like a person who is trying.

He sees Priya and grins. “Did both alarms work?”

Priya narrows her eyes. “Don’t become too smart this early.”

He salutes her badly, like yesterday.

Rakesh comes out too, slower, rubbing his face. He is not in a hurry today. Holidays pull his shoulders down a little, even when money is tight.

He looks at Priya’s prepared pile by the shelf—folder, two pens, water bottle—and asks, as if checking a bus route, “Clinic?”

Priya nods. “I’ll go.”

Sunita sets a steel tumbler of chai in her hand like a blessing. “First, we will see the flag,” she says, as if it is settled.

Priya wants to say, But my time is ten.

Then she remembers something simple: the school is near, and the clinic is far.

There is room for both.

They walk to Arjun’s school ground after breakfast. The lane is already busy. Boys run by with paper flags in their hands, the sticks bouncing against their palms. Someone has tied a ribbon to a scooter handle, and it flutters like it is trying to escape.

At the school gate, a teacher stands with a clipboard and a face that says discipline is a hobby.

Priya stands a little behind Sunita, not wanting to be seen too much. She watches Arjun join his line—boys in white shirts, some with green sashes, some with shoes that are too new. A loudspeaker crackles and then clears its throat.

The flag is hoisted.

The National Anthem begins.

Priya has heard it a thousand times, but today she listens differently. Maybe because she is standing on the edge of two worlds—school ground and clinic desk, home courtyard and printed forms.

Arjun sings loudly and with conviction.

He is still wrong in at least one line.

Priya bites the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t laugh.

After the anthem, there are short speeches. Words like “duty” and “future” get thrown into the air like flower petals. Then the teacher with the clipboard starts handing out laddoos.

Arjun runs over to them, laddoo in hand, already half eaten. Sugar clings to the corner of his mouth like proof.

“Did you see me?” he demands.

“I saw your hair,” Sunita says. “It is standing like a flag only.”

Arjun wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Didi also saw.”

Priya nods solemnly. “Yes. I saw. You were… very patriotic.”

He beams.

Then he looks at her folder under her arm. “Now you will go do office?”

“It is not office,” Priya says, but she can’t deny that her stomach feels like she is going for something important.

Sunita adjusts Priya’s dupatta at the shoulder. “Go now,” she says softly. “jaldi (quickly), but not in panic.”

Priya sets off.

At the bus stand, Chai Uncle has taped two small flags to his stall, one leaning, one stubbornly upright. He sees Priya and raises his eyebrows.

“Holiday also you are going?” he asks.

Priya lifts her folder slightly. “They said Monday.”

Chai Uncle clicks his tongue, half impressed, half amused. “Good. Work is also like parade. First you go and stand. Then you learn how to march.”

He pours her a small glass of chai, extra ginger without asking.

Across the road, a group of boys are practicing a march that is mostly stomping. Their teacher shouts “Left!” and at least three of them go right.

Priya smiles into her chai.

The shared auto takes longer than usual. Some roads have more people, some have less traffic, and everyone is slightly distracted by the holiday. Flags on poles catch in the wind. A radio somewhere keeps reporting about celebrations in Delhi—parade, tableaux, big words—things that sound far away and yet somehow arrive in their lane as stickers and songs.

Priya checks her phone once.

9:42.

Her fingers tighten on the folder.

When she reaches the clinic lane near canal road, her heart speeds up before her feet do. She knows the turn. She knows the signboard. She knows the smell of medicine and dust.

She arrives at 9:58.

And the shutter is down.

Priya stops so suddenly that a man behind her nearly bumps her elbow.

The clinic’s signboard looks the same. The plastic chairs are stacked inside, visible through the narrow gap at the bottom. A paper has been taped to the shutter.

She leans close.

The paper says “26 JAN — HOLIDAY” in thick marker.

For one second, her brain goes blank, like a page before typing.

Then the feeling comes—hot and small.

I have come for nothing.

It is a familiar feeling, the one that sits behind every form and every queue: the fear of looking foolish.

Priya stands with the folder pressed against her stomach and tries to breathe normally.

A woman with a child in her arms is also standing there. The child’s nose is running. The woman looks at the shutter and sighs as if she has been sighing since morning.

“Will it open?” she asks.

Priya doesn’t know what to say.

She could say, Maybe not.

She could say, It’s a holiday.

Instead she says the truth she has been practicing.

“Number not clear,” she almost says, because that sentence is now too ready.

She corrects herself quickly. “I don’t know. They told me Monday.”

The woman shifts the child on her hip. “Doctors sometimes come even on holidays,” she says.

Priya nods.

She looks at the time again.

10:04.

She could leave.

She could go home and tell Sunita, It was closed. What can I do?

But yesterday she decided something else, in a quieter way.

Show up.

So she waits.

The minutes stretch. Not long, but long enough to feel like a test.

At 10:23, the sound of keys comes from the lane.

The clinic desk woman appears, walking briskly as always, dupatta tucked, face set in working shape. She sees the small crowd—Priya, the mother with the child, two men who have arrived in the last few minutes—and her eyes land on Priya’s folder.

“You came,” she says, not exactly praise, not exactly surprise.

Priya’s throat tightens. “You said Monday,” she answers, because that is the only thing she can hold.

The desk woman reaches the shutter, rips off the holiday paper without ceremony, and folds it once.

“Holiday is for office,” she says. “Fever is not taking holiday.”

Then she unlocks the shutter and lifts it up with a practiced pull.

The sound—metal rolling upward—sticks to Priya’s mind like a new kind of proof.

Inside, the air smells like Dettol and old paper.

The desk woman points at the chair. “Sit. Open register. Pen ready.”

Priya’s hand goes to her pens automatically.

Two pens.

Sunita is always right in the way mothers are annoying about.

Work begins.

It is slower than other days—fewer people, but not zero. A clinic does not get to be patriotic; it has to be practical.

Priya fills forms. She writes names carefully. She asks for phone numbers twice when they blur into speed.

The desk woman watches her once, then goes back to her own rhythm.

A man comes in saying he needs a “certificate” for his son because school has asked for proof of fever last week. The desk woman sighs, dictates lines, and Priya types them into the computer, fingers stiff at first and then smoother.

At one point, Priya hears herself say, very clearly, “Please tell again,” and the patient repeats without anger.

That small thing—asking without apology—lands inside her like a new brick in a house.

By noon, the winter sun has warmed the lane outside. Light slants through the clinic window in a pale rectangle. The desk woman’s phone plays a Republic Day song for half a second before she silences it.

“Everyone sending same,” she mutters.

Priya almost laughs.

At 1:55, the desk woman closes the register.

“Enough for today,” she says.

She counts notes from a small drawer, quick and exact, and hands Priya ₹300.

“Come tomorrow,” she adds, as if this is the only real sentence.

Priya holds the money carefully. Wages and travel money and trial money all feel the same in paper, but inside her chest they feel different.

Outside, the lane has started to look ordinary again. Flags droop. Children are tired. The loudspeaker’s voice has gone silent.

On the way back, Priya stops at the bus stand and sees Chai Uncle still there, still pouring tea like the country is held up by steel kettles.

He looks at her face and understands without asking.

“Open?” he says.

Priya nods. “Open.”

“Good,” Chai Uncle says, and pours her half a glass. “First day you went on holiday also. Now you will not run away on normal day.”

At home, Arjun is already back, shoes kicked off, telling his Republic Day story too loudly—who marched well, who got scolded, who dropped their cap.

Priya listens while washing her hands.

Sunita looks at her, reads her face the way she reads milk on the stove.

“Was it open?” she asks.

“Yes,” Priya says. “And… they gave.”

She places the ₹300 on the edge of the steel tray.

Sunita doesn’t smile big. She just nods, once, like a person marking a column.

In the afternoon, the TV at the neighbour’s house plays the Delhi parade. The music floats in through the lane—military bands, speeches, the voice of the announcer proud and tired.

Priya sits on the floor with her phone and keyboard and types one line into a note, not for anyone else.

Republic Day — clinic open. I went.

Then, under it:

Tomorrow: 10–2. Folder flat. Two pens. Don’t guess.

The words are plain.

But they settle her.

In the evening she goes to the roof again. The sky is clear. Somewhere a child is still waving a small tiranga (tricolour flag) like it is a toy that must be used before it is forgotten.

Priya thinks of the shutter rolling up.

She thinks of herself standing outside, waiting, not leaving.

It is a small kind of courage, the kind that looks like nothing to people who are not looking.

Back downstairs, she sets the alarms again.

7:30.

7:45.

Two small promises.

Then she puts the folder on top of her clothes for tomorrow, flat like always, and lets the day end the way it began—ordinary, cold at the edges, and a little more real than yesterday.