The Four Letters

Thursday comes with wind.

Not the rude kind that slams doors, but the steady kind that makes the neem tree sound busy—leaves clicking together like someone sorting papers without looking up.

Priya wakes before the first alarm, the way she sometimes does when her mind has already started counting. For a second she lies still and listens: Sunita’s bangles in the kitchen, a distant scooter, the soft whirr of the ceiling fan that should not be needed in February but is.

At 7:30 the phone rings anyway, loyal to its job.

She reaches out and turns it off. The second alarm waits, and she lets it ring for a few seconds just to prove it exists. Then she turns that off too.

In the courtyard the air feels clear—no poured fog today, only a faint morning haze hanging far away, like a thought you can ignore if you keep moving.

Sunita is rolling dough, her palms leaving perfect circles on the board.

“Kal (yesterday) you came late?” she asks, meaning: were you tired.

“Not late,” Priya says, and smiles because she knows what Sunita is really asking. “Normal time.”

Sunita nods and slides a tiffin toward her. “Then today also normal. Eat.”

Priya eats quickly—two bites that taste of aloo and ajwain—then opens her plastic folder.

The papers sit the way she left them: PAN copies still flat, corners obedient. Her signature exists now inside a drawer at the clinic, but she checks her pens like she always does.

First pen: fine.

Second pen: also fine.

She clicks both once, just to hear the small promise.

At the bus stand, the wind makes everyone’s mufflers lift at the ends like flags with no country.

Chai Uncle’s sign is still there.

WORLD CANCER DAY

The paper has curled at the corners, and the tape looks tired. Under the bold letters, the slogan sits like a neat sentence someone has underlined twice:

United by Unique.

Priya reads it again even though she knows it now.

Chai Uncle is stirring milk in a pot, wrist moving in practiced circles. He looks up and follows her eyes.

“Yesterday finished?” he asks.

“Finished,” Priya says. “Today normal.”

He makes a face like normal is a slightly disappointing vegetable. “Normal also good. But you gave many papers, na?”

“Haan (yes),” she says. “One each.”

He taps the sign with the back of his spoon. The wind lifts it, lets it fall.

“Now it will fly,” he declares.

“It won’t fly,” Priya says, but she laughs, because the idea of awareness paper taking off like a kite is too funny to keep inside.

A radio near a paan shop is crackling with a forecast voice—serious, official.

“Maximum… around twenty-five… minimum around eleven…”

Priya doesn’t catch the whole sentence, but she catches the numbers. She likes numbers when they come with boundaries.

On the shared auto, the canal-side air is sharper. The water has small ripples today, as if it is also listening to the wind. A white bird stands on one leg and watches the passing traffic with the calm of someone who has nothing to submit.

At the clinic, the queue has already formed its shape—people not quite sitting, not quite standing, slips pressed in palms that are a little damp from morning chores.

The desk woman is there, as always, her hair pulled back with the same tight clip. The clinic feels switched on because she is.

Priya greets her softly and takes her seat.

The desk woman’s eyes flick once to Priya’s folder—checking for nothing missing, the way a mother checks a child’s sweater.

“Cancer paper finished?” she asks.

“Some left,” Priya says.

“Keep,” the desk woman says. “Next time also.”

She says it like the clinic has a calendar in its bones.

Then she pushes a small notepad toward Priya.

“Write,” she says.

Priya picks up her pen.

“Staple pins. Stamp ink. Labels. Paper. Cutter.” The desk woman says each item like she is counting vegetables at a shop.

Priya writes carefully.

The list looks calm on paper. Lists always do.

The desk woman watches her writing, then adds, as if it is just another stationery item:

“And… passbook copy.”

Priya’s pen pauses.

“Passbook?”

The desk woman nods once. “Doctor saying—maybe from March we do transfer. Cash every day, problem. Bring passbook photocopy. IFSC also.”

The letters hit Priya like a small pebble.

“IFSC?” she repeats.

“I-F-S-C,” the desk woman spells out, impatient with vowels. “Branch code. You will find.”

Priya writes it down in capital letters.

IFSC.

It looks like a person’s name without a face.

A patient steps forward and says his address too fast.

Priya turns back to the register, grateful for familiar boxes.

“Dheere (slowly),” she says, holding her hand up like a traffic police.

He repeats, slower.

She writes it, repeats it back, gets a nod.

After two patients, a woman unfolds yesterday’s leaflet like a map.

She points at a line and asks, “Ye kya hai? (What is this?)”

Priya leans in. She reads the Hindi sentence about not ignoring symptoms, about early checking.

Her throat tightens—not with fear, exactly, but with responsibility.

She is not a doctor.

She is a person who writes numbers in the right boxes.

“Doctor ko dikha lijiye (Please show the doctor),” Priya says gently, pushing the leaflet back into the woman’s hand. “Woh batayenge (He will explain).”

The woman nods, relieved that the question has somewhere to go.

Priya returns to her register.

The morning moves in its usual rhythm: stamp, write, repeat digits back, staple a slip, slide it forward.

In a small lull, when the bench outside the doctor’s room holds only two people and even the printer seems to be breathing quietly, Priya looks again at the four letters on her notepad.

IFSC.

She thinks of her passbook.

She has one, she is pretty sure. Somewhere.

But it lives in the house like an old relative—present, but not in the room you are in.

She looks up at the desk woman.

“Passbook me hota hai?” she asks. “IFSC passbook me?”

“Haan,” the desk woman says, already turning pages. “First page. Or last. Wherever bank people print. Bring photocopy only. Don’t bring original daily.”

Priya nods.

Even the desk woman has a privacy rule.

At 2:05, the desk woman counts out ₹300 like always.

But today, when she slides it across, she adds, “Transfer maybe later. You bring copy tomorrow or Saturday.”

Tomorrow.

Another small deadline.

On the way back, Priya stops at Sharma Ji’s shop even though she knows she cannot photocopy what she does not have.

Sharma Ji is eating something fried behind the counter, cheeks full, eyes on the screen.

He looks up when she enters and says, without greeting, “Clinic?”

“Yes,” Priya says. “They said passbook photocopy. And… IFSC.”

Sharma Ji’s mouth stops mid-chew.

“IFSC?” he repeats, then nods like this is familiar nonsense. “Bank code. On passbook. Also on cheque.”

“I don’t have cheque,” Priya says quickly. It comes out like a confession.

“Passbook okay.” He points his chin toward her bag. “You brought?”

Priya shakes her head. “Ghar me hai (It’s at home). Somewhere.”

He makes a sound that could mean anything from sympathy to irritation.

“Find. Photocopy first page. And listen—don’t send account number on WhatsApp. Bring paper to clinic.”

Priya nods. Another rule, same shape as PAN.

Outside, the wind has picked up. A dust spiral runs across the lane like a small, playful demon and disappears.

At home, Sunita is sorting lentils in a steel plate, the way she sorts everything—patiently, without drama.

“Passbook?” Priya asks.

Sunita looks up. “Why?”

“Clinic. Transfer salary maybe. Need photocopy.”

Sunita’s eyebrows lift. Not excitement—more like she is measuring the weight of this new kind of word.

“Transfer means bank,” she says.

“Haan.” Priya puts her bag down and takes out the notepad. “They said IFSC.”

Sunita squints at the letters. “Ye kya word hai? (What word is this?)”

“I don’t know,” Priya admits.

Sunita wipes her hands on the end of her dupatta and walks to the steel trunk in the corner—the one with the heavy lock that clicks like a final answer.

She kneels, opens it, moves aside old cloth, a bundle of wedding photos in a plastic cover, Arjun’s tenth-class certificate that they have checked too many times just to feel safe.

Then her hand finds a small book wrapped in a polythene bag.

“Isko kahte hain passbook,” Sunita says, as if introducing a shy person.

Priya takes it.

The cover is worn at the edges. Inside, her name is printed in a neat font that looks nothing like her handwriting.

PRIYA VERMA.

She traces the letters lightly with her finger.

It is a strange feeling—seeing your name in a machine’s handwriting. Official, but also a little distant. Like a photo taken by someone else.

Arjun appears at the doorway, drawn by the sound of the trunk.

“Passbook nikla? (Passbook came out?)” he says, delighted. “Didi millionaire!”

“Chup (shut up),” Priya says, but she smiles.

Sunita taps the book. “First page, check. There is code.”

Priya turns the page.

There are many printed things: branch name, account number, IFSC.

There it is.

IFSC.

Not a person’s name. Just a code, sitting calmly among other codes, as if it has always lived there and only she was late to meet it.

She takes her phone out and opens Notes.

She types the four letters slowly, then the code next to them.

She does not type the whole account number. Not yet.

Instead, she writes:

Passbook photocopy: first page.

Sunita watches her for a second, then says, “Tomorrow you will go early to photocopy.”

“Haan,” Priya says.

In the evening, when the house quiets and even Arjun’s pretending-to-study noise becomes softer, Priya takes out her keyboard.

She sets the timer.

Fifteen minutes.

Her fingers find the bumps on F and J, steady and familiar.

Then she moves to the new thing.

I.

F.

S.

C.

Four letters. Four small taps.

On the screen they appear in clean, stubborn capital.

IFSC.

She looks at it for a moment, then types her name once, the way she did yesterday.

Priya Verma.

Two lines, both correct.

Outside, the wind keeps turning neem leaves over and over, as if checking their backs for stamps.

Priya closes the passbook, slides it back into its polythene, and puts it on top of her folder—two kinds of proof resting together.

A photocopy in a drawer.

A code on a page.

Ordinary things.

But today, they feel like a door that knows her name.