Episode 13: Token Forty-Seven

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

The labour office opened at ten. Gopina was there at nine-forty.

By the time the shutter rolled up, twelve people were already in line behind her. A man in a safari suit. A woman with three folders tied in cloth. Two boys sent by their father, bored and shoving each other. Outside the door, a man with a stack of photocopied forms was already working the queue, offering to help with filing for a fee. Gopina shook her head. He moved on to the safari suit.

Inside: twenty plastic chairs in four rows. A ceiling fan that reached the first two rows and made a sound like a playing card in a bicycle spoke. A counter at the far end with three windows. Windows 2 and 3 had their shutters down. Window 1 had a small board behind it: NOW SERVING — 31.

Her token said forty-seven.

She sat. The chair had one short leg and rocked whenever she moved. The woman next to her had brought a quilted cushion, the size of a dinner plate, which told Gopina everything she needed to know about how long this was going to take.

By eleven, the board said thirty-six.

The woman with the cushion had left. A boy selling tea from a kettle came through the front door, was shouted at by the guard, went out, and came back through the side door five minutes later. Nobody complained. Three people bought tea. Gopina didn’t have the change.

The clock on the wall still said eleven-twenty-two. It had said eleven-twenty-two when she sat down.

At noon the man in the safari suit got up and left without being seen at the window. The two boys had fallen asleep against each other.

At twelve-fifteen, the board said forty-two.

· · ·

“Forty-seven.”

Gopina stood, walked to the counter, and slid her form through the gap. The clerk behind the glass was eating peanuts from a newspaper cone with one hand and turning pages with the other. He did not look up.

“This is for employment records.”

“Yes,” Gopina said.

“Employment records is Window 2.”

“Window 2 is closed.”

“It opens after lunch.”

“When is lunch?”

“One-thirty.”

It was twelve-twenty. She had an hour and ten minutes to sit and look at a shuttered window.

“Take a seat.” He looked up for the first time. Not unkind. “Window 2, after lunch.”

Gopina took the form back. She walked past the rows of plastic chairs, past a man who had fallen asleep with his file on his chest, past the guard who was pretending not to see the tea boy on his third round, and sat down in the second row on the Window 2 side.

There was no queue on this side. Three chairs, no board, no token system. A sheet of paper taped to the shuttered window read: HOURS — 10:00 TO 1:00 / 1:30 TO 4:00.

She checked the clock on the wall. Still eleven-twenty-two. She checked her phone. Twelve-twenty-five.

She was counting ceiling tiles — forty-six, which felt right for a day like this — when someone sat down beside her.

“Window 2?”

Gopina looked. A girl about her age, maybe a year older. Plain cotton kurta, rubber slippers, a thin folder under her arm. Hair in a braid, no earrings, no watch. She could have been from Kumhar Gali or Arya Nagar or any lane in town.

“Window 2,” Gopina said.

“Been here long?”

“Since ten.”

The girl sat back and tucked the folder under her chair. “I’m here for a family-welfare form. The factory has to countersign and send it here, which they did. But the district office says the form is the old version. So I have to get the new blank, take it back, get it signed again, and bring it back. It’s the third time.”

“Third time.”

“First time the signature was in the wrong box. Second time the date format was wrong. This time the whole form is wrong. Same information. Same signature. Different piece of paper.”

“Three trips for the same form.”

“I’ve never actually filled out a government form before this. Someone at the office usually handles all of it.” She looked at the shuttered window. “They don’t tell you the windows close in the middle of the day.”

The guard shouted at the tea boy. The tea boy set a cup on the guard’s chair and left through the side door again.

“Your form,” the girl said. “Employment record?”

“For someone I know. A correction. The record says he wasn’t there, but he was.”

“Wrong employer code? Missing entry date? They lose those all the time.”

“Missing entirely. Like he never existed.”

“That’s a mess.”

“It’s a mess.”

They sat with it. The fan wobbled overhead. The peanut shells from Window 1 had settled in a small pile near the counter.

“I’m Khushi,” the girl said.

“Gopina.”

“Gopina. Old-style name.”

“My mother’s grandmother’s. Apparently nobody argued with that woman, so the name stuck.”

“Mine means happiness. My mother said I should be responsible for providing it, which is a lot of pressure for a name.”

One-fifteen. The clerk at Window 1 had finished his peanuts and was reading a newspaper folded to the classifieds. Somebody’s phone rang three times before the owner realized it was his.

“Khushi what?” Gopina said. Filling time.

“Modi.”