The Cheque Leaf

Saturday begins before it is supposed to.

The gate makes its careful click near dawn, and Priya’s eyes open on their own—Rakesh is home from a night shift. Sunita meets him with chai, steam instead of questions.

At 7:30 the alarm rings. Priya turns it off, listens to the wind worrying the neem leaves, and lets the 7:45 backup ring just long enough to prove it exists.

Priya sits up.

Her plastic folder is where it should be, pressed flat under a notebook, corners behaving. She touches the edge of it—more habit than need—then checks her pens.

One. Two.

Both write.

Sunita is at the hand pump, rinsing cups. The water hits steel and makes the courtyard feel clean.

“Saturday also clinic?” Sunita asks, not unkindly. It is the same question every week, adjusted for a new routine.

“Only four hours,” Priya says. She means it as comfort, but it sounds like a measurement.

Sunita nods. “Then go. Don’t be late.”

Priya eats quickly—two bites of leftover roti with aloo—and packs her bag: folder, water bottle, biscuit packet, two pens. She looks once at the passbook in its polythene cover sitting on top of the steel trunk.

Yesterday it became photocopy.

Today it can rest.

Outside, the lane is clearer than it has been all week. Not fog-free exactly—winter doesn’t leave without making you watch it—but the air has a bright edge, as if the sun is doing its work earlier.

At the bus stand, the wind lifts the ends of shawls and dupattas like they are all trying to salute something.

Chai Uncle has already put his kettle on. His World Cancer Day sign is gone now; in its place, a small red paper heart is taped to the stall.

It looks suspiciously new.

And beside it, in a steel bucket, there are roses.

Not many. Maybe a dozen. Red and pink, their heads heavy, their stems wrapped in newspaper.

Priya stops.

Chai Uncle sees her eyes and grins like he has caught her doing something romantic.

“Today Rose Day,” he announces, as if the government has issued a circular.

“Rose… day?” Priya repeats.

“Yes yes,” he says, stirring milk with the authority of someone who reads the world through WhatsApp forwards. “Whole week. Today rose. Tomorrow propose. Then… I don’t know. But people will buy.”

Chai Uncle lowers his voice to Priya. “Even Arjun will ask, you see.”

Priya laughs softly. “Arjun doesn’t have money for rose. He has money only for chips.”

Chai Uncle shakes his head, amused. “Love also needs recharge.”

Priya buys a small chai—ginger, extra hot—and drinks it standing, letting the warmth move down into her hands. She doesn’t buy a rose. Not because she doesn’t want to. Because she doesn’t know who it is for.

She is not ready to turn her day into a message.

The shared auto arrives, rattling like an old tin box full of coins.

On the ride to the canal road, the water looks restless under the wind. A white bird stands near the edge on one leg, stubbornly still. Priya likes that. A bird that refuses to be hurried.

At the clinic, Saturday has its own shape.

Not as heavy as Monday, but more crowded than people like to admit. Half the town decides to do their “small check-up” on Saturday because Sunday feels like a promise.

The desk woman is already in her chair, hair clipped back, eyes moving across the room like a ruler.

Priya greets her, sits, opens the register.

For two hours, the day is familiar work: names, ages, symptoms written in short phrases, phone numbers spoken too fast. Priya does what she always does now.

She lifts her hand.

“Slowly,” she says, smiling so it sounds like help, not scolding.

And when someone repeats, she repeats back, because that is her small rebellion against mistakes.

Around noon, there is a lull—two minutes where the waiting area breathes instead of coughs.

The desk woman pulls Priya’s staff file from the drawer.

It is thicker now. Not thick like a book, but thick like a life becoming official: stapled photo, PAN copy, bank-details form.

She flips through it and makes a small sound.

“Bank form okay,” she says.

Priya nods, careful not to show how quickly her chest loosens.

Then the desk woman adds, as if talking about buying staple pins:

“Cancelled cheque also bring.”

Priya blinks. “Cheque?”

“Yes. One leaf.”

Leaf.

The word is so ordinary it confuses Priya. Leaves are on trees; this one is on a form.

“A cheque leaf,” the desk woman clarifies, impatience sharpening her vowels. “Account proof. Doctor will ask for transfer.”

Priya’s throat tightens.

“We don’t have cheque book,” she says, and hears how small her voice becomes when she says don’t.

The desk woman looks at her like this is not a tragedy, only a missing item on a list.

“Then take from bank,” she says. “Ask cheque book. Bring one cancelled. Photocopy also keep.”

“Today?” Priya asks before she can stop herself.

The desk woman shrugs. “When you can. But don’t delay. Transfer work starts, then people run.”

Priya has spent her whole year learning not to run, but her stomach still tries.

She nods. “Haan (yes),” she says, and in her head she adds the gloss like a stamp: yes, I heard.

The queue returns, as if the room has been waiting politely for paperwork instructions to finish.

By 2:00, Priya’s fingers feel tired from writing, but it is the good tiredness—work done, not worry alone.

The desk woman counts ₹300 from the drawer and slides it to her.

Same as always.

Transfer is still a future sentence.

But now it has a new word in it.

Leaf.

Outside, the wind has become louder. It pushes dust into small spirals that race across the road like children and then vanish.

Priya goes straight to the Mohanlalganj bank.

Saturday means half-day, and the gate is already crowded with people who look like they came to argue with the universe.

Inside, the bank smells like paper and impatience. A guard hands Priya a token: 42.

She sits with her folder on her lap and watches the display change numbers with the slow certainty of a ceiling fan.

When her token is called, she steps to the counter.

The man behind the glass looks up with the expression of someone who has already heard every request and is tired in advance.

Priya clears her throat.

“Cheque book… chahiye,” she says—chahiye (needed)—because Hindi is softer when you are asking for something you have never asked for before.

The man’s face changes by one degree. “Cheque book? You have account here?”

Priya slides her passbook forward, still in its polythene, and her Aadhaar copy behind it like backup.

He flips to the first page, finds her name, and nods.

“Fill request,” he says, and pushes a small form under the glass—boxes, of course.

She writes her name first.

Then the long number.

One digit per box.

She doesn’t guess. She doesn’t rush.

When she reaches signature, her hand pauses.

Signing for a cheque book feels heavier than signing the staff sheet. A cheque book sounds like something adults have in films—something that can be torn out and handed over and then become money.

She signs anyway.

Priya Verma.

The clerk takes the form, stamps it with a dull thud, and writes something on it in blue ink.

He tears off a small acknowledgement slip and slides it toward her.

“Cheque book will come by post,” he says. “One week. Ten days.”

“And… cancelled cheque?” Priya asks, feeling silly. Like she is asking for a leaf before the tree has grown.

He makes a sound that is half laugh, half irritation.

“Cancelled cheque is from cheque book only,” he says. “How you will cancel without leaf?”

Leaf again.

Priya nods. She holds the slip carefully, as if it might fly away in the wind outside.

“Keep safe,” the clerk adds, surprising her. “When cheque book comes, don’t sign blank. Don’t give anyone.”

Priya’s chest loosens. Advice is a kind of kindness.

Outside the bank, sunlight has sharpened. The roses in the bucket look almost too red, as if they are printed.

Priya walks home with the acknowledgement slip tucked inside her plastic folder.

It is a new kind of proof: not a number that makes her official, not a photocopy that shows her identity, but a promise that more paper is coming.

At home, Sunita is sweeping the courtyard. Neem leaves collect in a corner like a small protest.

Priya shows her the slip.

“Cheque book request,” she says.

Sunita takes it, reads the few words she can, then looks at the stamp.

“Stamp means true,” Sunita declares, satisfied.

“Yes,” Priya says, and laughs quietly because it is not wrong.

Arjun appears from nowhere, as he always does when there is paper in Priya’s hand.

“What stamp?” he asks. Then his eyes go to the roses outside the gate. “Also Rose Day today, didi (older sister). Give ten rupees.”

Priya raises an eyebrow. “For whom?”

Arjun shrugs with exaggerated dignity. “For… humanity.”

“Humanity can eat chips,” Priya says, and Arjun groans like he has been wounded.

Sunita hides a smile behind her broom.

In the evening, Priya sets her fifteen-minute timer and plugs her keyboard into her phone.

The keys click. The screen listens.

She types two words, slowly, like she is testing how they sit next to each other:

CHEQUE LEAF

Then she adds, in Hindi, because Hindi makes the image arrive faster:

patta (leaf).

She looks up.

Outside, the neem tree is still moving, leaves turning and turning in the wind, checking their backs like they are waiting for a stamp.

Priya reaches out, picks up one fallen neem leaf from the courtyard, and holds it between two fingers.

It is thin. It has veins. It is ordinary.

And yet, today, she has learned that even an ordinary word can become an instruction.

She puts the leaf down gently, as if it belongs in a file, and closes her folder.

The house is quiet again. Rakesh sleeps. Sunita moves in the kitchen. Arjun makes too much noise on purpose.

Priya’s new slip sits flat inside plastic.

Not money yet.

Just proof that she is learning how money travels.