"Achyutam Keshavam Krishna Damodaram
Rama Narayanam Janaki Valla.."

The song reached the Collectorate the way it always did. Clear for a few seconds, then buried under the sound of buses changing gears outside the gate. Aryan didn't look up. He had been sitting at the same table since nine-thirty that morning, and there were still enough files in front of him to make the day look unfinished.

He picked up the top file and checked the noting sheet. The application had been submitted eleven months earlier. Two departments had written to each other three times. A survey report had been requested twice and misplaced once. The last remark, written in blue ink three weeks ago, asked for a clarification that had already been answered on the fourth page.

Aryan turned back to the fourth page.

The answer was there.

He closed the file without writing anything and placed it on a separate pile.

Across the room, somebody called for a dispatch register. A chair scraped against the floor. The photocopier stopped in the middle of a page and stayed silent until the machine was switched off and on again. Nobody reacted to it. There was a rhythm to the office that nobody seemed interested in changing. People worked inside it the way people adjusted to traffic or summer heat.

"Sir."

Aryan looked up.

A junior clerk stood beside the table with another bundle of files.

"Revenue."

Aryan moved the previous pile a little to make space.

"Keep them there."

The clerk placed them down, nodded once and left.

There was no conversation beyond that. After a few months in the Collectorate, people stopped asking unnecessary questions. Files arrived because they arrived. They left because somebody else wanted them. Very few people knew where they went in between.

Aryan uncapped his pen and wrote two lines on the next noting sheet before stopping halfway through the third. He looked again at the application attached to the file. The applicant's address was familiar. He remembered seeing the same village name in another file the previous week. Different person. Different issue. Same village.

He leaned back for a moment.

Sometimes it felt as if entire places existed in government offices only through paper.

His phone vibrated once.

His mother.

He let it ring out.

She called again almost immediately.

He answered.

"Busy?"

"I'm at work."

"I know. Your uncle is coming tonight."

"I'll be late."

"You always say that."

"I probably will."

There was a brief silence.

"Have lunch properly."

"I did."

She didn't ask whether he was telling the truth. He hadn't eaten yet.

The call ended.

He placed the phone face down and continued reading.

Lunch usually happened when the work slowed down. Most days it never did.

By one o'clock the canteen boy walked in carrying steel tumblers of tea on a round tray. He knew where every glass belonged. One was left beside Aryan's files.

"You forgot yesterday," the boy said.

"I remembered after it became cold."

The boy laughed.

"You remember every day after it becomes cold."

Aryan smiled politely.

The tea remained untouched while he finished another file.

When he finally picked it up, it had already cooled.

He drank it anyway.

At two-fifteen, an elderly man entered the section with a folded receipt in his hand. He looked around uncertainly before walking towards Aryan's desk.

"Sir... land mutation."

Aryan took the receipt, checked the number and searched for the corresponding file. It wasn't on his table.

He opened the inward register.

Then another.

Finally he looked towards the records room.

"It hasn't come back from Legal yet."

The old man waited.

"Should I come tomorrow?"

Aryan almost said yes. Instead he checked the register once more.

"It may not come tomorrow."

"When then?"

"I don't know."

The old man nodded as though he had expected that answer all along. He folded the receipt carefully, put it back into his shirt pocket and thanked Aryan before leaving.

Aryan watched him until he disappeared beyond the corridor.

He wasn't disturbed by the conversation.

He was disturbed by how ordinary it had become.

Nobody had lied.

Nobody had been rude.

Nobody had refused to work.

Still, the man had gone home without an answer.

The file would eventually come back.

Somebody would sign it.

Another department would process it.

Months later, perhaps, everything would be completed.

The system was moving.

It simply moved at a pace that rarely belonged to the people waiting outside it.

By late afternoon the sunlight no longer entered through the windows. The tube lights came on one after another. Aryan looked at the clock above the notice board.

It had stopped.

Three twenty.

It had shown the same time since Monday.

He checked his wristwatch instead.

Four ten.

Nobody had bothered removing the clock.

The office had simply accepted that one of its clocks was wrong.

He wondered how long it took before people stopped noticing something that remained unchanged.

The thought stayed with him longer than he expected.

At half past four he closed the last file on his table and rubbed his eyes. There were still another fifteen waiting, but none of them would be finished before evening. He stacked them neatly, locked the drawer and stood up.

Most of the staff would leave together.

Aryan never did.

He preferred walking out after the first rush.

The corridors were quieter then.

Outside, the compound had begun to empty. Employees unlocked scooters, discussed transfers, complained about fuel prices and disappeared into the traffic one by one. Aryan walked past the main gate without looking for his motorcycle.

It was parked in the basement.

He never used it to go home directly.

About three hundred metres from the Collectorate stood a coffee shop that had opened less than a year earlier. It wasn't particularly famous, nor was it the cheapest place nearby. Office staff preferred the tea stalls on the opposite side of the road. College students came in groups after classes. Families appeared mostly on weekends.

Aryan had gone there for the first time because it was quiet.

Then he had gone again.

And then again.

After a while, habit stopped needing reasons.

The bell above the glass door made the same short sound every evening as he entered.

The cashier at the counter recognised him with a nod.

"The usual?"

Aryan nodded.

He always ordered the same thing.

Not because it was his favourite.

Because he disliked deciding the same thing twice.

While the coffee was being prepared, he looked around the room.

It was larger than it appeared from outside. Bookshelves lined one wall, though very few customers seemed to touch the books. A couple of college students occupied the corner table with open laptops. Near the window, an elderly man was reading a newspaper without ordering anything. Nobody asked him to leave.

Behind the counter, she was speaking to one of the employees.

Aryan didn't know her name.

He had heard customers address her several times, but somehow it never stayed with him.

She wasn't at the counter every day. Some evenings she moved between the kitchen and the accounts desk. Other days she spent an hour speaking to suppliers on the phone. Once he had seen her carry a sack of coffee beans with another employee because the delivery driver had left before unloading everything.

She didn't look like someone who owned a business.

She looked like someone who worked there.

Perhaps that was why he kept noticing her.

His coffee arrived a minute later.

The waiter placed it on the table with the receipt tucked underneath the saucer. Aryan moved both aside, opened the newspaper lying there and turned directly to the local pages. He rarely read the front page anymore. By the time the newspaper reached the café, he had already seen most of the headlines on his phone.

A chair scraped against the floor somewhere behind him.

Two college students sat down with notebooks spread across the table before either of them ordered anything. One of them was explaining something with unnecessary confidence. The other nodded every few seconds, although it wasn't clear whether he agreed or had simply stopped arguing.

Aryan read half an article before realising he hadn't followed a single line of it.

He folded the paper and took another sip of coffee.

Behind the counter, one of the employees was trying to explain something to the owner. She listened without interrupting, asked one question, checked something on the computer and pointed towards the stock shelves. The employee nodded and disappeared into the store room.

A customer walked in carrying a birthday cake box and asked whether they could keep it refrigerated for an hour. She said yes without looking inconvenienced. Before that conversation ended, someone else called her from the kitchen.

She walked away.

A few minutes later she returned with an apron still tied around her waist and continued entering something into the billing system as though she had never left.

Aryan watched for a moment before looking away.

The coffee had gone slightly warm.

He didn't mind.

The waiter passed his table.

"Another one?"

Aryan looked at the cup, then at his watch.

"No."

He slid the empty cup towards the edge of the table.

The waiter picked it up and walked away.

Aryan remained where he was for another few minutes, not reading, not looking at his phone, simply sitting as customers came and left.

Someone held the door open for an elderly couple.

The bell above the entrance rang once.

Then again.

The evening continued.