Episode 2: Monday to Friday

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

Gopina stood ten feet away, the camera heavy on her wrist. The strap dug into her skin where she’d doubled it. She should walk out through the gate. She had the photo. She had the line. She was already running behind.

She walked over.

Don’t talk to anybody.

“Bimla aunty.”

The woman looked at her. It took a second. The face working through its own fog, placing her. Kumhar Gali. The Verma house niece. The one always carrying notebooks.

“Gopina?”

“What happened?”

Bimla wiped her face with the back of her hand. “They’re saying he was never here. My Deepak. Four months he worked on this floor. He came home smelling like tile dust every night. And they’re telling me he was never here.”

Gopina looked at the plastic folder. Through the clear cover she could see a laminated card. A boy grinning wide, hair combed flat for the photograph. Along the bottom, in small type: Loading — Unit 3 (Line B).

“Have you shown this to anyone inside?”

“The office clerk. He didn’t even look at it properly.” Bimla held the folder away from her body with two fingers, showing how the clerk had held it. “Like this. Like it was something from the rubbish.”

Gopina looked at the guard. The guard looked at the wall.

She turned and walked back across the yard.

The PR man was packing up. Clipboard under his arm. The district photographers had already left. His smile was still on, the lower version, the one you keep running between events in case someone looks.

“Sir, there’s a woman at the gate. Her son worked on the loading line, Unit 3. He passed away two weeks ago. She’s saying the company has no record of him.”

The smile didn’t leave his face. But his eyes went somewhere careful.

“What paper are you with?”

“The Herald.”

“The local one.”

“Yes sir.”

He looked at her for a moment. Then he unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket and clicked it twice, slow.

“It must be a small mistake,” Gopina said. “If someone could just check the register.”

“We have a process for employment inquiries,” the PR man said. “She can submit a written request at the main office. Monday to Friday, ten to four.”

“She’s here now.”

“Monday to Friday.” He clicked the pen again. “Ten to four.” The smile came back. Full. “Anything else for your paper?”

Gopina stood there. She had two more questions and no more room to ask them. The yard was emptying out. The women with their boxed coolers were gone. The marigold garlands on the office door had gone limp in the heat. Somewhere inside the loading bay, the forklift started up again.

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

Bimla was still at the gate.

“He said you can submit a written request at the main office,” Gopina said. “Monday to Friday.”

Bimla nodded. She had heard this before. The nod of a woman who has been sent to the next window so many times she no longer believes there is a last one.

“I’ll come with you,” Gopina said. “On Monday. If you want.”

Bimla didn’t say thank you. She didn’t say anything. She just closed the plastic folder and pressed it back against her chest.

A man came through the side gate. Young, office clothes, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He didn’t look at Gopina. He walked straight to the fence where Bimla was standing, reached a bottle of water through the bars, and held it there until she took it. Then he turned and walked back inside. Not fast, not slow. He didn’t look back.

Bimla held the bottle in one hand and the folder in the other and stood at the gate in the noon sun.

Gopina checked her phone. Twelve-eighteen. She was late. Mohit would ask for the photo and the line, and she would have to answer for the rest of it. She had the photo. She had the line.

She looked back once more. Bimla hadn’t moved. The folder flat against her chest, the water going warm in her hand, the loading bay behind the bars where her son had worked.

Gopina walked out through the gate and turned toward the road. She was fourteen minutes late and she had talked to somebody.