The One-Hour Rule

Sunday arrives without permission.

At 7:30 the first alarm rings, sharp as a spoon dropped into a steel plate. Priya opens one eye and remembers, half a second too late, that there is no clinic today.

The second alarm at 7:45 comes anyway—faithful, offended on her behalf.

She taps it off and lies still for a moment, listening to the house breathe. The ceiling fan is off; winter has made even the fan unnecessary. Somewhere in the courtyard, the neem tree sheds a dry leaf, and it lands with a sound like a small surrender.

Sunita is already up. Priya can tell by the soft scrape of a steel bowl and the way the kettle mutters on the stove before it fully whistles. Sunday is supposed to be slow, but the house never entirely believes in slowness.

Priya swings her legs down. The floor is cold enough to feel personal.

She reaches for her phone out of habit and then stops herself. No portal. No clinic messages. No checking for a new email subject line as if it might bite.

Today she has given herself one rule.

One hour.

She has written it already—Sunday: one hour reading—but written promises are only half-promises until you keep them.

In the courtyard, Sunita has placed a small brass plate near the tulsi pot. A diya wick lies unlit, waiting.

“It’s Magh Purnima,” Sunita says when she sees Priya looking. Her tone is casual, as if saying it makes it easier to fit into the day. “And Ravidas Jayanti also. Light one diya, no?”

Priya nods. The festivals in their house are often like this—one diya, one sweet if there is jaggery, one sentence said softly so it doesn’t become a burden.

She washes her face at the hand pump. The water is cold enough to wake up her thoughts and rinse off yesterday’s clinic register lines.

Inside, Arjun appears, hair sticking up like he has been arguing with his pillow.

“Bandh hai kya? (Is it a strike today?)” he asks immediately, as if Sunday is not Sunday unless there is some drama attached.

“Today,” Priya says, “is Sunday.”

He grins. “That is not an answer.”

Sunita slides chai toward them—ginger, hot, sweet enough to make the tongue feel brave.

Rakesh sits on the edge of the charpai in the corner room, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. He looks like someone who has been interrupted mid-calculation.

“Bandh people do in city,” he says, echoing last night. “Here, some shop will close for show. Some will open. Warehouse will call or not call. We will see.”

Priya watches his face when he says we will see. It always means we will adjust.

After breakfast—two rotis and leftover aloo—Priya takes out the printed syllabus pages she brought yesterday from Sharma Ji.

The paper still holds the faint warmth of a printer that is not in her house.

She clears a corner of the shelf and lays the pages flat. Then she takes out the sticker labels.

The sticker sheet has that new-stationery smell Arjun loves, sharp and clean. She peels one blank label and holds it between her fingers.

A label is supposed to tell you what something is.

She writes, slowly:

SUNDAY — 1 HOUR

The marker squeaks a little on the glossy surface. The letters come out bold, slightly too serious for their meaning.

She sticks the label on the cover of her squared-page notebook.

Arjun leans over her shoulder. “Didi (big sister), you are labeling time now?”

Priya flicks his forehead lightly with two fingers. “If time can waste me, I can label it.”

He laughs and dances away, as if the sentence itself is entertainment.

Priya checks the clock.

9:40.

Too early. If she starts now, someone will surely ask her to stop—some lentils to be sorted, some errand to be run, some invisible household task that becomes urgent only when she sits down.

She has learned this about time: you have to choose it like you choose a seat on a crowded bus. If you hesitate, it will be taken.

So she does her fifteen minutes first.

Keyboard.

OTG click.

Physical keyboard connected.

Timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Today she types a sentence instead of numbers:

Bas ek ghanta (just one hour).

She types it twice, to make it feel like a refrain, and then stops when the timer ends, even though her fingers want to continue.

Stopping is also a practice.

At 10:30, Sana’s name lights up her screen.

Priya answers on the second ring.

“Tu ghar pe hai na? (You’re at home, right?)” Sana says, breathless like she has climbed stairs just to speak.

“I am home,” Priya says.

“Hazratganj side full drama,” Sana says. “People shouting, police, all. My chacha said don’t go city today. You also, no roaming.”

Priya presses the phone to her ear and looks at her syllabus pages on the shelf.

“I am not roaming,” she says. “I am reading.”

Sana makes a sound that is half pride, half disbelief. “Accha. Madam ji. One hour?”

“One hour,” Priya says, and hears her own voice firm up.

“Good,” Sana says quickly. Then, softer: “If clinic calls tomorrow, you go like usual. Today rest.

And send me photo of what you read. Proof.”

Priya smiles. Sana understands proof.

At 10:58, Priya sits on the floor near the shelf, back against the trunk. She places the syllabus pages in front of her like a small altar.

Sunita glances over. “You are starting?”

“Yes,” Priya says.

Sunita’s eyes move over the room, automatically finding the things that need doing. Then she nods once, like a woman stamping an invisible paper.

“Eleven to twelve,” she says. “Then you help me with dal.”

Priya feels relief. Permission is not the same as freedom, but it helps.

At exactly 11:00, the television in the other room turns on.

Arjun has done it.

The screen glows with a Parliament hall and men in white and beige sitting like rows of folded paper. A news ticker scrolls at the bottom. Words fly by too fast to catch.

Rakesh sits down to watch, chai in hand.

“Budget,” he says, as if this explains everything.

Priya has heard the word budget all her life, but mostly as a sentence said in the kitchen: the budget is tight. This budget is a different creature, wearing a mic and being discussed by people who never have to decide between gas and new slippers.

She looks back down at her pages.

The first unit has a name that feels heavy in her mouth even in silence. Some words are in English. Some are in that official Hindi that sounds like a school principal.

She starts anyway.

She reads a line.

Then reads it again.

Then underlines a word she does not know, as if underlining makes it less dangerous.

Outside, the lane is unusually quiet. No vegetable seller shouting. No auto horn. Even the dogs have decided to save their arguments for another day.

Bandh, or Sunday, or both.

From the television, a voice says something about “new rules” and “forms” and “simplification.” Priya’s attention flickers, involuntary.

Forms.

Her world is made of forms.

A desk woman at a clinic saying, “Write clean.”

Sharma Ji saying, “Don’t click link.”

Sunita saying, “Two pens.”

Budget people on TV saying, “Simplified.”

The word lands in her mind like a pebble in a pocket.

She turns the page and finds a list of readings. Names of authors look like cities she has never visited.

She does not panic.

Instead, she makes the problem smaller.

She takes her notebook and writes, in Hindi, neat and slow:

1) Unit 1 — read first two pages.

2) Find meaning of 5 words.

3) Ask Sana which book she has.

She looks at the clock.

11:22.

The hour is still hers.

Arjun pads over and sits beside her, quiet for once.

“What is this?” he whispers, pointing at the reading list.

“BA,” Priya whispers back.

He squints at one line. “Why all names? This is like cricket team list.”

Priya covers her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Go,” she whispers, pushing him gently with her shoulder.

He goes, but not before sticking his finger on her notebook label.

“SUNDAY — 1 HOUR,” he reads, amused. “Okay. I will not disturb. I will disturb after twelve.”

At 11:40, the sky outside changes colour—light dulls slightly, as if someone has pulled a thin cloth across the sun. Priya hears a distant rumble that could be a truck far away, or thunder deciding whether it wants to exist.

She keeps reading.

At 11:58, Sana sends a message.

Photo or it didn’t happen.

Priya takes a picture of her underlined page and her little list, making sure the label on the notebook is also visible. She sends it.

Then she looks at the clock.

12:00.

She closes the pages.

Her chest feels oddly light, the way it feels when you finish a task you were avoiding and discover nothing terrible happened.

Sunita calls from the kitchen, as if on schedule.

“Lentils!”

Priya goes.

The afternoon moves in ordinary work: washing rice, sorting lentils, wiping the shelf that collects invisible dust no matter how often you wipe it.

The television continues with budget talk. A sentence floats out—something about girls’ hostels, something about jobs, something about medical hubs. Sunita pauses, ladle in hand.

“Hostel in every district,” she repeats slowly. “For girls. Achha hai (that is good), no?”

Priya nods, thinking of her own town, her own bus stand, the way Lucknow feels both near and far.

In the evening, a few drops of rain actually arrive—so light at first they could be imagination. Then more, tapping on the tin shade like someone testing if the house is awake.

The smell of wet earth rises fast. The neem leaves shine.

Rakesh goes to bring the clothesline in, moving quickly, muttering that winter rain is only good for showing you what you forgot outside.

Arjun stands in the doorway and lets the cool air hit his face as if it is a luxury.

Priya watches the rain and thinks of her one hour.

She thinks of how it held, even with bandh talk, even with budget voices filling the other room.

Later, when the rain stops and the night becomes clean and cold again, she sets up the keyboard one more time.

She does not start a timer.

Instead, she opens her note and types:

1 Feb — Sunday hour done. Underlined 5 words. Made list. Rain came in evening.

She adds one more line, then pauses to read it twice:

If I can keep one hour, maybe I can keep more.

She saves the note.

She peels one last sticker label from the sheet.

On it, she writes:

FEB

She sticks it on the edge of her folder, small and silly and satisfying.

February begins the way January ended—not with fireworks, but with something named neatly enough to be found.