The Second Pen

Morning arrives without ceremony, like a person who has done this job for years.

Priya’s first alarm rings at 7:30 and she sits up before her mind can negotiate. The second alarm follows at 7:45, faithful as ever, and she feels a small flicker of gratitude for past‑Priya—the one who set them.

The courtyard is cold in that clean January way. The hand pump water is colder.

Lucknow winters are not the kind that snow, but they are the kind that insist. Even when the sun comes out later, the mornings hold on. In late January, the days here often climb to something mild and the nights fall back to something sharp—around a low near 7°C and a high near 21°C, the kind of range that makes you keep a sweater on the chair even when you don’t wear it all day.

She thinks it, not as weather knowledge, but as a practical rule: don’t trust the afternoon to explain the morning.

Sunita is already awake, moving quietly so the house wakes in layers. A steel tumbler waits; the chai (tea) smells of ginger and certainty.

“Today also?” Sunita asks, as if yesterday could still have been an exception.

“Today also,” Priya says. Her voice doesn’t wobble.

Rakesh sits on the edge of the cot, tying his sweater string like it is a knot in the world. He is off from the warehouse this morning—holiday yesterday means some shifts shuffle like cards—and he watches Priya slide her plastic folder into her cloth bag.

“Two pens?” he asks, teasing in the safest way he knows.

Priya lifts them like evidence. “Two pens.”

Arjun appears in the doorway, hair wild again now that the flag ceremony is finished. Republic Day is already becoming yesterday’s story.

“Didi is going to do naukri (job),” he declares to no one in particular.

Priya makes a face at him. “Eat your breakfast first. Then do announcements.”

He eats anyway, still announcing.

Before leaving, Priya checks her bag the way her mother checks milk on the stove: quick glance, quick adjustment.

Folder flat.

Aadhaar copy (even though she has given it already, she cannot stop carrying one—habit is stronger than logic).

PAN receipt.

Water bottle.

Two pens.

And the small line in her head that has become a rule: don’t guess.

At the bus stand, the air smells like dust and warm oil from someone’s early samosa pan. A thin morning fog sits low, not thick enough to hide anything but thick enough to soften edges. People stand closer to each other than usual, as if the cold makes a small social agreement.

Chai Uncle is there, of course, pouring tea like the day is made of it.

He sees Priya and lifts his chin. “Normal day now,” he says.

Priya nods. “Normal day.”

“Normal day is harder,” Chai Uncle says, and then, because he cannot leave a sentence alone, adds, “Holiday you can blame. Normal day you have only yourself.”

Priya smiles, half at him, half at the truth of it.

She doesn’t buy chai today; she has already had one at home and she is learning that money also needs habits. Still, Chai Uncle pours her a sip anyway—an almost symbolic amount.

“Bas,” he says, meaning enough.

The shared auto is crowded. A woman’s woollen shawl smells faintly of smoke, like yesterday’s cooking fire has come along for the ride. Priya holds her bag on her lap with both hands, as if it is fragile.

By the time she reaches the clinic lane near canal road, the fog has started to lift. The shutter is already up.

That sight—the open metal mouth of the shopfront—relaxes something in her chest.

Inside, the desk woman is at her seat, hair pulled back, pen moving fast. She doesn’t look up when Priya enters; she looks up when Priya is already beside her, because efficiency is also a kind of respect.

“You came on time,” the desk woman says.

Priya glances at the clock. 9:58.

“Yes,” she says, not proud, not apologetic. Just factual.

“Sit,” the desk woman says, and slides the register toward her.

Work begins the way it always begins: with people and numbers and the tiny gap between what someone says and what someone means.

Today is busier than yesterday.

Maybe because it is not a holiday. Maybe because one day of postponing illness creates two days of crowd. Or maybe this is simply the real rhythm of the place and yesterday was the exception.

The first patient is a man in a brown sweater who smells of cold air. He gives his mobile number too quickly, as if speed will reduce the seriousness of being here.

Priya writes the first six digits, then stops.

“Number theek se boliye (please say the number clearly),” she says, keeping her voice polite and firm.

The man repeats, slower this time, and she repeats it back under her breath as she writes.

Across the desk, the desk woman’s eyes flicker once toward Priya. Not praise. Just acknowledgment that the rule is still holding.

A woman with a toddler on her hip complains about the cold and then, immediately after, complains about the heat from the waiting room’s old fan.

“Winter has no manners,” the woman says.

Priya almost laughs. She hands her the small slip to sign and points to the place.

The toddler grabs at the pen.

Priya instinctively holds it tighter.

Then she remembers: there are two.

She offers the second pen, the one with the slightly chewed cap that Arjun tried once and then discarded.

The toddler grips it with serious concentration and immediately tries to eat the cap.

The mother jerks him back. “Arre!” (hey!)

Priya takes the pen gently and gives the toddler the corner of a paper instead.

A paper is safer. Also, in a clinic, paper is always available.

By 11:30, Priya’s wrist has learned the day’s handwriting: names in Hindi, ages in digits, the spelling of villages that are pronounced one way and written another. Every few minutes she shifts to the computer, entering the same details again, trying to keep the lines inside her head neat.

A patient asks for a printout of an old report.

The desk woman calls, “Printer, paper tray,” like it is a command in a kitchen.

Priya goes to the printer, opens the tray, checks the stack. It is low.

She adds paper carefully, tapping the edges on the table the way Sunita taps rice in a steel bowl before washing: a small ritual to make it behave.

When the print comes out, the paper is warm, as if the machine has its own body heat.

A little later, the jam happens.

It is not dramatic; it is just a stubborn half‑sheet stuck at an angle.

Priya feels the familiar rise of panic—the old fear that machines are angry gods and you have offended them.

Then she remembers yesterday, the slow pull, the reseat.

She opens the tray. She grips the paper. She pulls slowly, like removing a thorn.

The sheet comes free with a soft tearing sound that stops before it becomes damage.

She pushes the tray back in.

She prints again.

The next page comes out clean.

The desk woman doesn’t look up, but she says, “Haan,” meaning okay, and in that one syllable Priya hears something like trust.

At 12:15, her phone vibrates in her bag.

She doesn’t take it out immediately. A new habit is forming: work time has edges.

When there is a lull—two patients stepping out at once, the waiting room briefly rearranging itself—Priya checks.

A message from Sana.

How is office?

Priya stares at the word office and feels both laughter and seriousness.

She types back, slowly, with her thumbs.

Clinic. Busy. I am not guessing numbers.

Then, because she cannot resist a small brag, she adds:

I removed paper jam.

Sana replies with one word.

Shabaash.

Priya’s cheeks warm.

At 1:30, the desk woman finally speaks about money.

Not in a big announcement way. In a casual way, as if money is just another column.

“You will come daily,” she says, eyes on the register. “Ten to two. For now, three hundred per day.”

Priya holds her breath for half a second.

Three hundred per day.

It is not a fortune. It is not a salary with a letterhead. But it is a number that repeats, and repetition is how stability begins.

“Okay,” Priya says, then corrects herself because she has learned that unclear answers are also a kind of guessing.

“Yes,” she says. “I will come.”

The desk woman nods once. “PAN receipt bring next week. Keep safe.”

Priya touches her bag, where the receipt is already inside the folder like a pressed leaf.

“Yes,” she says again, and this time the word feels like something she can deliver.

At 1:55, the desk woman closes the register with a slap that sounds like an ending.

Priya cleans the desk quickly—straightens the pen holder, stacks the used forms, wipes a small spill of chai someone has left too near the keyboard.

The desk woman counts notes and hands Priya ₹300.

Priya folds it once, then twice, and tucks it into her notebook at home‑money place, separate from the keyboard place. She has begun making mental shelves inside herself.

Outside, the sun is fully out now, making the lane look almost friendly. The morning fog has turned into nothing but a memory on people’s shoulders.

On the ride back, Priya watches the city’s edge slide past: small shops, a school wall painted with patriotic slogans already peeling, a man selling winter caps that no one wants at 2pm.

At home, Sunita is in the courtyard with vegetables. She looks up as Priya enters and immediately reads the day from her face.

“Busy?” she asks.

Priya nods. “Busy. And…” She places the money on the steel tray.

Sunita counts without counting—just by looking—and says, “Good.”

Arjun is doing homework at the floor, muttering as if the textbook has personally insulted him.

He looks up at the money and then at Priya. “Didi is earning,” he says, impressed in the way only a younger sibling can be impressed.

Priya wants to say, Don’t make it a big thing.

But she also wants to say, Let it be a thing at all.

So she just says, “Do your work.”

In the evening, when the courtyard light turns soft and the cold starts creeping back in, Priya takes out her phone and keyboard.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Not because she has to prove anything to anyone today. But because the day is made of habits now, and she likes the feeling of a promise that fits in a small space.

After practice, she opens a note and types one line.

27 Jan — busy day. Pay fixed for now. Second pen saved me.

She reads it once, then locks the phone.

Upstairs, she lays the plastic folder flat on top of her clothes again.

Two pens go into the bag.

Then she sets the alarms.

7:30.

7:45.

Outside, someone in the lane laughs loudly—one sharp burst, then quiet. Winter carries sound in strange ways.

Priya pulls the blanket up, feels the cold at the edges of the room, and lets the day settle inside her the way a printed page settles when the ink dries: ordinary, slightly warm, and real enough to keep.