The Paperclip

The fog is back in the morning, but it behaves.

It stays low, shallow, like it is tired of performing. The lane outside their courtyard is blurred at the edges, but Priya can still see the neem tree and the hand pump and the neighbour’s buffalo shifting its weight.

Her first alarm rings at 7:30. Her second alarm rings at 7:45. Between them, she gets out of bed, folds the blanket, and feels the day click into place.

Rakesh has come in late from a warehouse night shift and the house automatically learns quiet. Sunita’s movements become softer. Arjun’s voice becomes a whisper that still somehow manages to complain.

Priya washes her face, then stands by the stove for a second just to borrow warmth.

Chai arrives in a steel tumbler, ginger cutting through sleep.

Sunita looks at Priya over the rim of her own cup. “Today fog again?”

Priya shrugs. “Only morning.”

It isn’t a guess. Everyone’s phone has been saying it since yesterday.

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

The OTG connector clicks. The phone says Physical keyboard connected. Priya sets a timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Today she practices the kinds of things that decide if people trust you.

She types:

226301

She types it again, slower.

Then she types dates—29/01/2026—because dates look neat until they don’t. She practices the movement of the slash and the quiet discipline of stopping.

When the timer ends, she stops even though her fingers want to do one more line. Stopping on time is part of the lesson now.

She puts the keyboard away and slides her plastic folder out from the shelf.

Clinic notes.

Aadhaar copies.

PAN acknowledgement receipt.

And the photocopy she got made yesterday.

She doesn’t have to look at them long. She just needs to know they are there.

At the doorway, she checks her bag.

Folder flat.

Water bottle.

Two pens.

Small cash.

Don’t guess.

At the bus stand the fog smells like damp dust and frying oil. People stand close without meaning anything by it.

Chai Uncle is in his usual place, pouring tea like a service.

He sees Priya and lifts his chin. “Look,” he says, holding out his phone. “Today also they say—fog morning, clear day.”

Priya catches the numbers this time because she has started noticing numbers everywhere.

“Maximum twenty-one,” Chai Uncle says, pleased with himself. “Minimum ten. Cold will sit at night.”

Priya nods. The numbers are small, but they change how you choose a sweater.

Chai Uncle pours her a sip.

“Bas (enough),” he says, and she drinks it like a blessing and a boundary.

The shared auto comes with elbows and impatience. Priya holds her bag on her lap, hands resting on it like she is holding a living thing.

By the time she reaches the canal-road lane, the fog is already thinning. The clinic shutter is up. The waiting room is already full.

Inside, the desk woman is at her chair, pen moving fast.

Priya stands beside her, waiting for the sentence that starts the day.

“Sit,” the desk woman says. “Register.”

Work begins.

Names, ages, villages.

A cough that sounds like a door that won’t close.

A fever report held like a secret.

A man who says his phone number as if he is racing a train.

Priya writes the first six digits, stops, and looks up.

“Number theek se boliye (please say the number clearly),” she says.

He repeats it slower.

Priya repeats it back, her own voice becoming a mirror.

The desk woman doesn’t praise. She never praises. But her silence is a kind of permission.

At 11:15, between two patients, the desk woman pulls out a thin cardboard file cover from the drawer. It is the colour of old paper.

She slides it toward Priya like it is just another form.

“Your file,” she says.

Priya’s stomach tightens—not fear, just the feeling of becoming official.

“Write,” the desk woman says. “Name, father name, address. Neat.”

Priya takes one of her pens. She writes slowly on the file cover, the way she writes on a school admission form—careful letters, no flourishes.

Priya Verma

Father: Rakesh Verma

Village: Mohanlalganj, Lucknow

Her hand wants to shake because this feels important, but her fingers know the shape of steady work now.

The desk woman takes the file back, opens it, and tucks in a few photocopies—Priya’s Aadhaar copy, the staff-details sheet with her stapled photo, and a blank lined page.

“PAN copy also,” she says, not looking up.

“I have photocopy,” Priya says quickly.

“Next week,” the desk woman says, the same instruction as yesterday, and then—almost as an afterthought—adds, “Bring one more photo if you have.”

Priya nods. She thinks of the small photo studio near the market lane. She thinks of the way the camera flash makes people look like they are caught doing something wrong.

A patient arrives in a hurry, and the file disappears into the drawer like it was never there.

The day continues.

At 12:40, her phone vibrates in her bag.

Priya keeps her eyes on the register.

Work time has edges.

When the queue softens for a minute—someone stepping out to buy medicine, someone else being called into the doctor’s room—Priya checks.

Another email.

The subject line is longer than her patience.

This time she notices something new.

A small icon beside it. Like a bent piece of wire.

A paperclip.

She does not know the English word for it, but she has seen it on real papers in school offices.

She doesn’t open it.

She locks the phone and puts it back, her heart beating like she has just passed a small test.

At 1:55 the desk woman closes the register with a slap.

“Go,” she says.

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

₹300 lands in her palm.

On the ride back, the afternoon is clear and honest. The fog has left without drama. People’s faces look sharper in the sunlight.

Priya gets down near the market lane and walks to Sharma Ji’s shop.

He is busy, of course. A man is arguing about a printout margin. A schoolboy is tapping his foot like he is powering the computer with impatience.

Sharma Ji sees Priya’s face and knows she will not leave.

“What?” he asks.

Priya holds up her phone. “Email again.”

Sharma Ji squints. “Hmm.”

Priya points at the small icon. “This… like clip.”

Sharma Ji’s mouth pulls into something that is almost a smile but refuses to become one.

“Attachment,” he says. “Paper that travels.”

Priya repeats the word quietly. “Attachment.”

Sharma Ji taps the screen with one finger. “Link is different. Link can take you anywhere. Attachment is inside.”

“Inside,” Priya echoes, as if she is learning a map.

He looks at her. “Still, don’t open if you don’t trust. Check sender. Check spelling. Government mail will have proper thing.”

Priya nods, relieved that her rule does not have to change. It only has to become sharper.

Sharma Ji opens the email on his computer. A small PDF downloads with a sound like a coin dropping.

“See,” he says. “Same acknowledgement. Nothing new. But keep.”

He prints it because printing is how Sharma Ji turns the digital world into something respectable.

The paper comes out warm.

Priya holds it for a second and feels the strange comfort of weight.

Sharma Ji clips it to the photocopy she already has and hands it over.

“Now your file will become fat,” he says, and makes it sound like a threat and a joke.

Priya smiles despite herself.

On the way home she buys a small packet of biscuits for Arjun because he will act like he doesn’t want it and then eat it fastest.

At home, Sunita is sorting lentils on a steel plate, picking out tiny stones like she is saving the family from surprise.

Priya places the new printout on the shelf and then lays the plastic folder flat on top of it.

Sunita looks up. “More paper?”

Priya nods. “Email came. Sharma Ji printed.”

Sunita’s face relaxes in a way that makes Priya realise: Sunita trusts paper more than phones.

Arjun appears, sees the biscuit packet, and pretends to be uninterested.

“What is this?” he says.

“Nothing,” Priya says.

He takes it anyway.

In the evening, the cold returns, creeping in from the courtyard edges.

Priya sets up her keyboard again.

Timer.

Fifteen minutes.

When she finishes, she opens a note and types one line.

29 Jan — fog morning, clear day. Clinic made my file. Email had paperclip. Attachment = paper that travels.

She reads it once.

Somewhere between yesterday and today, a new kind of confidence has entered her life.

Not the loud kind.

The kind that pauses.

Upstairs, she puts two pens in her bag.

She sets the alarms.

7:30.

7:45.

Outside, the lane is quiet. The fog has left, but the night keeps its own softness.

Priya pulls the blanket up and lets the day settle inside her—like a paper clipped neatly into place, no corners flying.