The Subject Line

The morning is made of two alarms and one small patch of fog.

7:30 rings, and Priya sits up before she can bargain with herself. 7:45 rings, and she is already standing, shawl over her shoulders, hair gathered with the same quick twist as yesterday.

Outside the courtyard, the lane looks close and far at the same time. Shallow fog hangs like a thin scarf over the road—enough to soften edges, not enough to hide anything important. By afternoon it will be clear, everyone says. The radio says it. The forwarded messages say it.

Priya washes her face at the hand pump, the water sharp enough to pull her fully into the day.

Sunita has already lit the stove. Chai is on, the ginger smell rising with the steam.

“Time?” Sunita asks.

Priya glances at the clock without touching her phone. “There’s still time,” she says, and hears the quiet satisfaction in her own voice. Time is beginning to feel like a thing she can hold.

Before breakfast, she takes out her phone and the second-hand keyboard.

The OTG connector clicks in. The phone flashes its small message—Physical keyboard connected—like a polite greeting. Priya sets her timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Today she practices numbers. Not random numbers, but the kind she sees all day: dates, pin codes, phone digits. She types:

226301 226301 226301

and then forces herself to stop before her fingers start to race.

When the timer ends, she puts the keyboard back in its newspaper wrap, careful as always.

On the shelf, her plastic folder lies flat. She slides it out and checks the contents like ingredients:

Aadhaar copy.

Clinic notes.

The PAN acknowledgement receipt—kept flat, just as Sharma Ji insisted.

She touches the receipt’s corner. It is only paper, but it has a number that belongs to her. A proof.

Sunita watches her for a second. “Receipt safe?”

“Safe,” Priya says. Then, because she has learned that vague answers can turn into trouble, she adds, “In the plastic folder.”

Sunita nods, and the nod is its own blessing.

Rakesh is on the cot, half awake, listening to the house wake up. He doesn’t have a warehouse shift this morning. His sweater is folded beside him, ready in case the phone rings.

“Clinic?” he asks.

“Clinic,” Priya says.

He hums once—approval, worry, pride, all packed into one small sound.

Arjun drifts in, hair still wet from splashing water on it like a lazy ritual. “Didi (older sister), today also patient-patient?” he asks, making fun of the word the way he always does.

“Today also,” Priya says, and flicks her scarf at him.

He dodges, grinning. “Okay, okay. I will study. Don’t do my registration.”

Priya points her spoon at him. “Do your homework. And don’t touch my pens.”

She checks her bag at the doorway.

Folder flat.

Water bottle.

Two pens.

Small cash.

And, inside her head, the sentence that has become her steady rope: don’t guess.

At the bus stand, the fog smells faintly of damp dust. A tea kettle whistles, and the air fills with that comforting, boiled sweetness.

Chai Uncle is already there, of course, like an unmovable part of the morning.

He is holding his phone out to a group of men as if it is a newspaper. Priya catches the words as she passes: Lucknow and neighborhood… fog during morning… clear sky… Someone reads numbers aloud with unnecessary authority.

Chai Uncle sees Priya and waves her closer.

“See,” he says, tapping the screen with one knuckle. “Today fog is only for show. After that, clear.

Maximum twenty-three, minimum eleven.”

Priya looks at the screen, not because she doubts him, but because she likes seeing facts anchored to a source. She does not understand all the English lines, but she understands the shape: morning fog, daytime clear.

“Good,” she says.

Chai Uncle pours her a sip into a small steel cup—just a taste.

“Bas (enough),” he says again, as if he is training her in boundaries.

The shared auto arrives with its usual chaos of elbows and bags and someone complaining that the cold has entered their bones permanently. Priya sits with her bag on her lap, both hands resting on it like a promise.

By the time she reaches the canal-road lane, the fog has already started thinning. The clinic shutter is up. That one sight loosens her shoulders.

Inside, the desk woman is there, pen moving, register open.

Priya enters quietly and stands beside the desk.

“You came,” the desk woman says, as if this is the main qualification for a job.

“I came,” Priya replies.

The desk woman flips a page of the register with a sharp, practiced motion. “Sit. First patient.”

The day is busy in the familiar way now—names, ages, coughs, fevers, the soft panic people carry when they don’t feel well. Priya writes, then types, then prints. She repeats numbers back.

A man in a brown cap gives his mobile number too fast, all digits poured out like water.

Priya holds her pen still. “Number theek se boliye (please say the number clearly),” she says.

He looks irritated for one second—like she has asked him to do extra work.

Then he repeats it, slower.

Priya repeats it back under her breath as she writes, then says it out loud, checking: “Eight… six…?”

The man nods, surprised by his own cooperation.

The desk woman doesn’t look up, but Priya sees her mouth tighten—approval disguised as neutrality.

Around 11:00, when two patients step out together and the waiting room rearranges itself, the desk woman finally asks, “PAN receipt?”

Priya’s chest tightens for half a beat, and then relaxes.

She doesn’t have to scramble. She doesn’t have to say “tomorrow.”

She opens her bag and slides the plastic folder forward, keeping it flat on the desk like a respectful offering.

“This,” she says, and pulls out the acknowledgement.

The desk woman glances at it—only a glance, like a person checking a stamp.

“Okay,” she says. “Keep original. Give me photocopy next week. File banaana hai (we have to make a file).”

Priya nods quickly. “Yes.”

She slips the receipt back into the folder with a careful thumb.

The word file stays in her mind like a new shelf being built.

After that, the day speeds up again.

A child cries in the corner. A grandmother complains that the fan is too loud. A young man insists he has no phone number because he is “not that type,” and Priya, politely and firmly, finds out that he has a phone number after all.

The printer makes its warm-paper breath.

At 12:30 her phone vibrates in her bag.

Priya doesn’t touch it immediately.

Work time has edges now.

When the queue thins for a minute and the desk woman is talking to the compounder, Priya checks.

One new email.

Her stomach flips—not fear exactly, but the newness of it.

The subject line is in English, long and official-looking. She understands only parts.

…PAN…Acknowledgement…

For a second, her thumb hovers over the message.

Then Sana’s voice from two days ago appears in her head, very clear: *don’t click random links.

Priya takes a breath. She doesn’t open it.

Instead, she does the thing she has been practicing in every form and every phone digit.

She pauses.

She refuses to guess what a link is.

She locks the phone again.

The decision is so small it almost feels silly, but it leaves her calmer than opening it would have.

At 1:55, the desk woman closes the register with the same slap as yesterday.

“Go,” she says.

Priya wipes the desk, straightens the pens, stacks the forms.

The desk woman counts notes and hands over ₹300.

Priya folds it once, then twice, and puts it in the home-money place in her notebook.

Outside, the day has done what Chai Uncle promised: the fog is gone. The sky is clear, pale winter blue. The lane looks honest.

Instead of coming straight home, Priya gets down near the market lane and walks to Sharma Ji’s shop.

It is busy—always busy—but not angry-busy.

Sharma Ji sees her folder and makes a face like he has already guessed the request.

“Photocopy?” he says.

“Yes,” Priya says. “Clinic file.”

He takes the receipt, keeps it flat, and makes a copy with brisk competence.

While the machine whirs, Priya points at her phone screen, carefully keeping it angled so no one else can see.

“Email came,” she says. “It looks like it’s about PAN. The subject… like this.”

Sharma Ji squints. “Hmm. Subject line. Don’t open link if you don’t know.”

He says it like he invented the rule.

Priya almost smiles. “Sana said same.”

“Good girl,” Sharma Ji says, but without softness—more like a clerk stamping a paper.

He taps the screen once, reads quickly, and nods. “It is a normal message. Acknowledgement again. You already have paper. Keep this also, but no need to worry.”

Sharma Ji hands her the photocopy. “Keep both. Original safe. Copy give.”

Priya slides the copy into the folder behind the original, like putting a guard behind a valuable thing.

On the way home, she buys coriander and green chilies, because Sunita will ask and because coming home with empty hands feels like arriving without punctuation.

In the courtyard, Sunita is sorting vegetables, fingers fast.

“All done?” she asks.

Priya holds up the photocopy like a small flag. “Copy.”

Sunita nods once, and Priya feels the nod in her bones.

Arjun is on the floor with his books, making a face at a math problem.

“Didi,” he says without looking up, “clinic has email also?”

Priya snorts. “Everything has email now.”

“Even you,” Arjun says, pleased with himself.

“Even me,” Priya agrees.

In the evening, the cold begins creeping back, as it always does. Priya takes out her keyboard again.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

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

28 Jan — fog morning, clear day. PAN copy made. Email came. I did not click.

She reads it once and feels something settle.

Not triumph.

Just the quiet comfort of doing the right small thing at the right time.

Upstairs, she lays the plastic folder flat again.

Original receipt. Copy behind it.

Two pens in the bag.

Alarms set.

Outside, winter carries a distant laugh across the lane, a scooter passing, a dog barking once and then stopping.

Priya pulls the blanket up, her hands slightly tired in a good way, and lets the day dry inside her like a freshly printed page—ordinary, clean, and safe enough to hold.