The Damp Register

Monday arrives with the smell of yesterday still in the courtyard.

The rain has not stayed long enough to become a story, but it has stayed long enough to change everything’s texture: the brick floor is darker, the neem leaves shine like they have been polished, and the air holds a cool dampness that makes the kettle’s steam feel necessary.

At 7:30, Priya’s first alarm rings. She is already half-awake, as if her body has learned to rise a few seconds before the sound so it can pretend it is choosing.

At 7:45, the second alarm confirms what Monday is.

Priya sits up and immediately sees the edge of her plastic folder on the shelf—its corner neatly wearing a small sticker label.

FEB.

It is such a small thing, almost ridiculous, but it makes her feel as if the month is not something that happens to her. The month is something she can point to.

Sunita is at the stove, hair clipped back, moving with the calm speed of someone who has already decided what must be done.

“Wet day made more work,” Sunita says, glancing at the courtyard where muddy footprints have appeared like accusations.

Priya smiles because it is true. Water never comes alone; it always brings cleaning behind it.

She washes her face at the hand pump. The water is colder than yesterday, as if the rain has taught it a new sharpness. Her fingers ache for a moment, then wake up.

Inside, she packs for the clinic the way she has started to pack for everything lately—flat papers, two pens (Sunita’s rule), a small packet of biscuits in case her stomach complains at noon.

Rakesh is already awake too, sitting on the charpai and rubbing his palms together.

“Road will be slippery,” he says, more to himself than to her.

Priya nods and tucks her folder under her arm like it is an extra rib.

Arjun appears at the doorway, yawning loudly, and says, “Aaj school? (School today?)” as if he cannot quite trust Monday either.

“Yes,” Sunita says. “And you will go on time. No drama.”

Arjun gives Priya a look that says at least you understand me, and Priya answers it with the kind of sympathetic shrug older siblings learn early.

Outside, the lane is damp and quiet. The usual dust has been pressed down into the earth, and the world feels briefly cleaner, like a sheet shaken out.

At the bus stand, puddles hold sky in small, trembling pieces.

Chai Uncle is already there, wiping his counter with a cloth that looks permanently brown no matter how many times he rinses it. The kettle on his stove makes its familiar impatient sound.

“Arre (oh), office madam,” he says when he sees Priya, using the new teasing title he has decided she deserves. “Today you will bring February register, no?”

Priya laughs softly. “You already know my work also?”

Chai Uncle pours chai into a steel tumbler and slides it toward her. “Wet morning needs extra ginger,” he says, and this time he actually means it.

A newspaper lies folded near his elbow, its edge curled from moisture.

“World… Wetlands Day,” Chai Uncle reads aloud, sounding the English slowly like it is a medicine name. He taps the line with his finger. “Two February. Wet land. Like your lane today.”

Priya leans in, squinting at the print.

“Wet… lands?” she repeats.

“Haan (yes),” Chai Uncle says, pleased with himself. “Where water stays. Bird people go there.”

Priya thinks of the canal road near the clinic, the way water sits in shallow pockets beside it even in winter, reflecting the sky like cheap mirror. She thinks of the egrets she sometimes sees standing very still in the fields, as if they are waiting for someone to call them by name.

“Bird people,” she says, amused.

Chai Uncle shrugs. “I am also bird person. I watch who comes, who goes.”

She takes two small sips of chai. The ginger burns nicely, like a clean line drawn down her throat.

When her shared auto arrives, she steps carefully around a puddle that looks shallow and isn’t.

The ride toward the clinic is slow, not because of traffic but because everyone drives as if the road might suddenly decide to become water again. The trees along the way drip quietly. Small channels beside the road run thin and shiny.

Near the canal, Priya sees two white birds perched on a bent pole, shaking their feathers like people shaking out wet shawls. For a second, she feels an odd tenderness for them—simple creatures doing simple work.

At the clinic, the day begins before she has even placed her folder down.

A queue has already formed at the desk. Monday makes people anxious; Sunday makes them postpone; the two together become a crowd.

The desk woman looks up as Priya enters and gives her the smallest nod—hello, but also start.

Priya sits, pulls the register closer, and uncaps her pen.

The first patient hands over a slip of paper that is slightly damp at one corner. The ink has begun to blur there, as if the numbers are trying to hide.

Priya’s stomach tightens the way it tightens when digits aren’t clear.

She breathes once.

“Number geela ho gaya hai (the number has gotten wet),” she says, keeping her voice polite and factual. “Please tell again.”

The patient repeats the phone digits loudly, impatiently, and Priya repeats them back the way she has learned. She writes carefully, pressing just enough.

The desk woman glances over, hears the repetition, and doesn’t interrupt. That is its own kind of approval.

By 10:45, a small pile of papers has collected on the desk—prescriptions, photocopies, slips with half-torn edges. Some are dry. Some are damp. Some look like they have lived too hard.

The printer begins to protest.

A page comes out with one corner crumpled, as if it has been bitten.

Priya doesn’t panic. She opens the tray, pulls the stuck sheet slowly, the way Sharma Ji taught her—no tugging, no tearing. Damp paper tears more easily; she can feel it.

She taps a fresh stack of paper on the table to align the edges, the little ritual she has turned into calm.

When she slides it back in, the printer makes a satisfied sound and continues.

The desk woman says, without looking up, “Good. Don’t fight machine. Make it friend.”

Priya almost smiles. It is the closest thing to praise the woman ever gives.

At 11:20, the desk woman reaches into a drawer and pulls out a thin, new register book.

She puts it on the counter like she is putting down a new responsibility.

“February,” she says. “Start new register today. Write heading neat. Date, month, year. No cutting.”

Priya’s heart gives a small hop—pride, fear, both.

She takes the register gently, as if it might be offended by roughness.

On the first page, she writes:

FEBRUARY 2026

She writes it in English, capital letters, the way official things like to be.

For a second, she remembers the sticker label on her own folder.

FEB.

She looks at the desk woman. “Madam, I can put label?” she asks.

The desk woman pauses—just long enough to consider whether this is nonsense.

Then she shrugs. “If it helps you. But not messy.”

Priya pulls out her own small sticker sheet from her bag. The sheet is thinner now; Sunday took some of it.

She peels one label, writes FEB neatly with her black marker, and sticks it on the inside cover of the clinic register.

It is a tiny act of ownership.

It is also, she realizes, a tiny act of belonging.

At noon, the crowd briefly thins. Someone’s toddler has fallen asleep on a woman’s shoulder; the child’s face is soft and serious, as if dreaming is a job.

Priya takes a sip of water and checks her phone once.

A message from Sana sits there.

Monday alive?

Priya types back quickly, keeping it simple.

Alive. Wet papers. New Feb register.

She adds one more line, then deletes it, then adds it again.

Also World Wetlands Day. Chai Uncle said bird people.

She sends it and immediately feels silly.

But silly is not the worst thing.

The desk woman calls, “Priya. Next patient.”

The afternoon rush comes in waves: name, age, phone, pin code, complaint. Name, age, phone, pin code, complaint.

Priya’s hand begins to ache in that dull way that means it is working properly.

At 1:40, a man arrives with a prescription so wet it looks like it has been washed.

He places it on the desk and says, defensive, “Rain.”

Priya looks at the ink, at the swelling paper.

She doesn’t scold him. She doesn’t sigh.

She takes a clean sheet, places it over the prescription, and presses gently as if she is helping it breathe.

Then she puts her heavy register on top, using it like a weight.

“Two minutes,” she says. “Then I will read.”

The man watches her, surprised by the calm.

Two minutes later, she lifts the register. The prescription is still wet, but the ink has stopped running.

It isn’t perfect.

But it is readable.

Priya feels a small satisfaction settle in her chest—the kind she feels when a paper sits flat.

At 2:05, the desk woman counts out Priya’s ₹300 and slides it across without ceremony.

“Tomorrow same time,” she says, because this is the kind of affection work gives.

Priya packs up slowly. She taps the edge of the February register once, a private goodbye.

Outside, the air is clearer now. The dampness has lifted into a softer warmth. The puddles at the bus stand have shrunk, but they still hold little squares of sky.

At home, Sunita asks, “How was?” the way she always asks, and Priya answers, “Busy,” the way she always answers.

But later, when the house settles into late afternoon—Arjun grumbling over homework, Rakesh half-asleep, the kettle beginning its evening mutter—Priya takes out her phone and opens a note.

She types the new word carefully, as if it might slip away.

wetland

Then, in Hindi below it, she writes:

paani wali zameen (land where water stays)

She looks at the words and feels something like a small bridge forming—between a newspaper headline she doesn’t fully understand and the canal water she sees on her commute; between global days and her own damp lane.

She sets a timer.

Fifteen minutes.

And she practices.

When the timer ends, she stops.

On the edge of her folder, the FEB label catches the light from the window.

Outside, a bird shakes water from its wings on the neem tree and then sits still, as if waiting for the next instruction.

Priya watches it and thinks—only briefly, not dramatically—that maybe learning is also like that.

You shake off what you can.

Then you stay.