Episode 4: The Wrong Side

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

“Mami.”

“What.”

“Today at the factory gate. There was a woman from Kumhar Gali —”

“I know about the woman.” Sushma’s hands paused on Rashika’s scalp. “The boy who died on the loading line. I heard at the kitty circle before you even got home.”

Gopina sat forward. “Then you know they are saying he never worked there. But he did. He had a gate card —”

“I don’t need to hear about gate cards.” Sushma pulled Rashika’s head straight. “What I need to know is why my niece — who I have fed and kept under this roof for eleven years — is standing at the Modi Tiles gate asking questions that grown reporters with actual salaries are not asking.”

“It was my assignment. Mohit sir sent me to —”

“Mohit sent you for a photograph. One photograph.”

Sushma set the oil bottle down and wiped her hands on her housecoat, leaving dark streaks across the fabric.

“Listen to me. I will say this once.”

She turned to face Gopina. Her hands settled flat on her knees.

“You are twenty years old. No degree yet. No savings. No father. The one thing you have is that nobody in this town connects your name to trouble. Nobody. That is worth more than gold, more than a government job, more than anything I could put on a wedding card. Do not throw it away for a woman you cannot help.”

“She’s our neighbor.”

“She is our neighbor whose son is dead and whose fight is with a factory that employs half this district. You want to be the girl who picks that fight? Who will marry you then? Tell me. Give me one name. One family in this town that will send a proposal for a girl whose face shows up on Modi Tiles’ wrong side.”

She was not shouting. Sushma never shouted. Her hand had found Gopina’s wrist without either of them deciding it, and she held it too tight.

Gopina didn’t pull away. She knew the math. She had known it before she asked.

“Good,” Sushma said. She picked the oil bottle back up. “Now go see about the kitchen drain. It’s blocked again.”

· · ·

Gopina called Mohit at nine, from the storeroom behind the kitchen. She sat on a sack of flour with the phone pressed to her ear and the door pulled shut.

“Sir. The woman from this morning — Bimla. Her son Deepak was on the loading line, Unit Three, Line B. He was nineteen. He had a gate card. If the paper could run even two lines confirming he worked there —”

“Gopina.” Mohit’s voice was tired. Not unkind. The voice of a man with thirty-two pages to fill and one advertiser to keep. “There is no space this week.”

“Two lines, sir. Not even a full story. Just a fact.”

“I heard you. No space.”

A pause. Through the storeroom door, mama-ji was providing commentary on a cricket match nobody else in the house was watching.

“Next week?” she said.

“We’ll see.”

They both knew what that meant.

She sat on the flour sack after hanging up. Phone dark in her lap. The drain behind the wall making small, backed-up sounds that nobody else in this house was going to fix.

· · ·

The storeroom door opened. Rashika, hair still slick with oil, phone in one hand.

“I heard you,” she said.

Gopina looked up.

“The walls in this house are made of paper. Everyone heard you.” Rashika leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “Mohit won’t run it. You know that.”

“He said next week.”

“He said ‘we’ll see.’ In Mohit language, that means stop calling me at nine o’clock.” She was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet Rashika got before saying something she hadn’t decided to say.

“I’ll ask Malik,” she said. “He owes me. The drainage story — the one he put his name on — that was mine. If there is a slot somewhere in the back pages, he’ll know about it.”

Gopina opened her mouth.

“Don’t.” Rashika held up a hand. “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing this for your Bimla. I’m doing it because Malik stole my byline and getting him to owe me one more favor is useful. That is the only reason.” She pushed off the doorframe. “And don’t hold your breath.”

She left. Her footsteps on the stairs, and then Sushma’s voice from somewhere below — who had left the storeroom light burning, did anyone in this house have the first idea what the electricity bill looked like, and had anyone dealt with that drain yet or was she meant to do everything herself.

Gopina stood up. Put the phone in her pocket. Went to unclog the drain.

From across town, the factory whistle. Ten o’clock. Shift change.