The Ten Letters

Tuesday starts with the sound of a gate that tries not to wake anyone.

Rakesh slips in near dawn, the way he does after a warehouse night—shoulders slightly rounded, shoes held in his hand, breath smelling faintly of cold air and tea. Sunita is already up, because Sunita is always already up. She pours him chai without asking questions that will make the tiredness heavier.

Priya watches it from her quilted corner and feels a strange gratitude for quiet routines. They are like the neem tree: always dropping something into your life, but also always standing where it should.

Her first alarm rings at 7:30 anyway. She does not snooze. She has learned that snooze is not a small delay; snooze is an invitation.

Outside, the lane has dried in patches. Yesterday’s dampness still hides in the shade, but where the sun hits, the bricks look almost cheerful. February mornings in this part of Uttar Pradesh can be cool and hazy, then suddenly warm by noon—the kind of winter that begins to loosen its shawl without warning. (Priya doesn’t know the exact temperatures, only that her hands want a sweater at eight and her forehead wants a dupatta shade at one.)

She eats two bites of poha, packs her plastic folder, and checks for the things that have become non-negotiable: two pens, a small water bottle, her phone, a biscuit packet.

Sunita calls from the stove, “Photo?”

Priya pats the folder. “Haan (yes).”

It is not a question of remembering anymore. It is a question of being the kind of person who has documents.

At the bus stand, the air smells like wet dust warming up. A few men stand around a newspaper, their hands tucked into sleeves, heads leaning together as if to share heat.

Chai Uncle sees Priya and lifts his chin in greeting. His stall looks freshly wiped, as if yesterday’s rain has made him stricter about cleanliness.

“Office madam,” he says, and then, with the seriousness of someone delivering official news, “Tomorrow… Cancer Day.”

Priya blinks. “Kal (tomorrow)?”

“Yes.” He taps the paper. “Four February. Big day. Like… heart day? But not heart.”

“Cancer,” Priya repeats carefully, because English words become easier when you say them like they are someone’s name.

Chai Uncle nods, satisfied she is participating in the world. “Hospital people will put poster. You will also put? You are hospital now.”

“I am clinic,” Priya corrects automatically, then surprises herself by feeling proud of the correction.

He pours her chai with extra ginger again. “Same thing,” he says, waving away the distinction the way adults wave away children’s arguments.

Priya takes her tumbler and stands near the edge of the road, watching a shared auto approach like a tired beetle. Her phone buzzes once.

A message from Sana.

Tuesday? Still alive?

Priya types back fast, because if she waits, she will make it into a paragraph.

Alive. Going.

She adds, then deletes, then adds again:

Chai Uncle says tomorrow is Cancer Day.

She hits send. The auto arrives. The day begins moving.

The canal road still has water sitting in shallow pockets, even though the lane at home has started to dry. Light reflects off it like someone has dropped little pieces of tin foil along the side. A white bird stands at the edge, patient and still, as if it is guarding the water.

At the clinic, the queue is already forming. Tuesday is not as anxious as Monday, but it is still heavy with people who postponed one day and now cannot postpone another.

The desk woman is there before Priya, which feels like a rule rather than a fact.

She looks up, sees Priya, and says, “Good. Sit.”

Priya sits. The chair is the same chair. The desk is the same desk. And still, every morning it feels a little like starting school again.

The February register is open where Priya left it yesterday. The FEB label sits inside the cover, neat and unashamed.

“Today,” the desk woman says, and pushes something small toward Priya.

A date stamp.

It is a metal thing with a plastic handle, slightly sticky to touch, like it holds old ink in its skin.

“Stamp date on slips,” the desk woman says. “Patients lose papers. Then they come back and shout. Stamp is proof.”

Priya turns it in her hand like a new utensil. She has seen stamps on ration cards, on school forms, on hospital papers—always like a final sound: thuk. Official, unquestionable.

“This?” she asks, pointing to the ink pad, a small square box that is closed like a secret.

“Yes,” the desk woman says, already turning back to her own pile. “But don’t make it messy. One clean stamp. Not three.”

Priya opens the ink pad carefully. The surface is dark and shiny.

She presses the stamp down once. Too lightly, she thinks. Then she presses it again, trying to correct the first press.

She remembers the instruction: not three.

She looks at the desk woman’s back and decides to pretend it was one.

The next patient hands over a slip with a name written in a rushed hand.

“Date,” Priya says, and stamps.

The stamp lands slightly crooked.

The date reads:

03/02/2026

Crooked, but readable.

The patient does not care. The patient cares only that the doctor will see him before his fever becomes a story.

Priya stamps the next slip. This time it lands straight.

A small pleasure flickers in her chest. It is ridiculous how quickly humans get proud of small rectangles.

By 11:00, her fingers smell faintly of ink. The printer hums. The queue breathes.

A woman arrives with a child on her hip and says her phone number too fast, as if speed will make it more true.

Priya raises her eyes. “Dheere (slowly), please,” she says, and holds up one finger at a time so the woman understands what she means.

The woman repeats, slower. Priya repeats it back. She writes it down. She stamps the slip.

Order.

At 11:30, in the middle of a lull that lasts exactly the length of a sip of water, the desk woman says, “Your PAN number came?”

The question is casual, as if she is asking whether Priya ate breakfast.

Priya’s stomach tightens.

“I have receipt,” she says quickly. “Acknowledgement.”

The desk woman’s pen pauses. “Receipt I have copy. Number also needed. Bring.”

Priya hears the sentence like a bell. Bring.

“How to get?” she asks, trying to keep her voice flat.

“Sharma,” the desk woman says, as if that answers everything. “Go after work. Tomorrow bring number.”

Priya nods. She nods too quickly. She feels heat rise in her cheeks—not shame exactly, but the feeling of being behind.

She spends the next hour stamping slips as if stamping harder will make the PAN appear.

At 1:10, she checks her phone once during a lull and types a message to Sharma Ji.

Hello. Any update on my PAN status? The clinic is asking for the number.

She watches the ticks: one grey, then two.

Sharma Ji replies with the least comforting sentence in the world.

Come in the evening. We’ll check.

The afternoon closes in with the usual rhythm: names, ages, complaints. The stamp becomes easier. Priya learns the pressure that makes the date dark without making it bleed.

At 2:05, the desk woman counts out ₹300 and slides it across.

“Tomorrow, number,” she says again.

Priya folds the notes carefully and puts them in the same pocket she always uses, because money should not move around too much. Money, like paper, has moods.

She goes straight to Sharma Ji’s shop.

The cyber cafe smells of warm machines and dust that never fully settles. A ceiling fan turns slowly, more for habit than for effect. Sharma Ji sits behind the counter with the expression of someone who has argued with many websites today.

He takes Priya’s phone and her printed receipt without ceremony.

“You people and your numbers,” he mutters, but his fingers are already moving.

On his screen, pages load in the way government pages load: slowly, as if each button has to ask permission.

Priya sits on the plastic chair and tries to breathe like she is waiting for a bus.

Sharma Ji clicks, squints, clicks again.

Then, after a pause long enough to feel like punishment, he says, “It’s allotted.”

“Allotted?” Priya repeats.

He repeats it in Hindi too, softer, because important things deserve home language: her PAN is here, and so is the number.

He turns the screen slightly so she can see.

A line of letters and numbers.

Ten characters.

It looks like a password. It looks like a license. It looks like a door.

Priya leans forward, trying to keep the shape of it in her mind. Letters first, then numbers, then letters again. It is not like a phone number; it has personality.

Sharma Ji prints the e-PAN page on thin paper that comes out warm.

He hands it to her and says, “Make two photocopies—one for you, one for the clinic. And don’t send this number to anyone by message. Samjhi? (Understood?)”

Priya nods again, but this time slower.

“Yes,” she says, and then adds, because gratitude needs something simple, “Thank you.”

Sharma Ji grunts, which is his version of you’re welcome.

Priya buys two photocopies. The machine spits them out with the same soft whirr as always, making her identity into multiples.

Before she leaves, Sharma Ji scribbles the PAN number on a small slip and pushes it toward her.

“Keep in folder,” he says. “But don’t lose.”

Priya takes the slip like it is a seed.

At home, the courtyard is lit with late afternoon sun. The neem tree’s leaves have dried completely now, and the whole house looks less heavy.

Sunita sees Priya’s face and knows something before Priya says it.

“Did it work?” Sunita asks, wiping her hands on her sari.

Priya holds up the paper.

“PAN,” she says, and then laughs once, surprised at her own laughter. “The number came.”

Sunita’s mouth curves in a small, satisfied way. “Achha (good). Keep safe.”

Priya goes to her shelf, opens her plastic folder, and slides the copies in carefully—flat, aligned, like they belong.

She peels a small sticker label and writes on it in neat capital letters:

PAN

She sticks it inside the folder, not on the outside. Some things are not meant to be announced.

In the evening, when the kettle begins its familiar mutter and Arjun argues with his homework as if it has personally insulted him, Priya opens her phone notes.

She types the ten characters once, slowly, just to prove her fingers can.

Then she backspaces them.

Proof is different from display.

She sets her timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Her fingers find the keys. The plastic bumps under F and J feel like small promises.

When the timer ends, she stops.

Tomorrow, she will hand over a photocopy and watch the desk woman put it into the staff file like the final page of a small story.

Outside, the lane is quiet. Somewhere in the dark, a bird shifts on the neem branch, settling itself more comfortably.

Priya lies down and feels the day settle too.

A stamp. A date. Ten letters.

Ordinary things.

But they fit in her folder now.