Mournee Razaiwi’s new internet connection hiccuped everyday. She complained. They delivered false promises. Not service. 

Mournee clenched her jaws every time she talked to them. She imagined her mother shaking her head from the other room — the way she used to when things couldn’t be fixed.

She had resigned four months ago. She checked job replies, then applied again in the next tab.

The internet snapped again. She lost it when the telecaller said, 

“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, madam.”

She entered his office and grabbed him by his collar. 

She didn’t punch him. 

Her body stopped before her hand did.

It felt like a hand touched on her shoulder mid-way. 

She turned around. 

There was nobody. 

The entire office stood up. The watchman came running.

Mournee let go of him.

In Kutchh, her mother’s family stitched Razai—quilts sewn in circles, stitched through gossip. They gifted these quilts to daughters on their first visit after marriage.

Mournee never took interest in it. But she slept in it. 

The quilt carried the same warmth signature as her mother’s hug. 

Her mother had left behind a room full of fabric—unfinished, waiting in permutations of colour.

When Mournee returned from the telecaller’s office. She entered her mother’s  room directly, after four months. The bulb was dead; she replaced it with a brighter one. 

Then she started stitching. 

She knew quilt-making. She had watched her mother since childhood. Sometimes, deliveries of new thread knocked her door. She only opened the door to receive parcels. 

She didn't stop until she had passed all the pieces through her needle.

The internet still hiccuped.  

In a few months, the room emptied. The racks grew heavy with finished quilts.

Her punch stopped mid-way. 

The needle didn't. 

-

.

Reference: 

(In Kutchh, Gujarat, people hand-stitch Razai (quilts) while sitting in the sun, stitching through conversation and gossip. Even after migrating to larger cities, many carry this practice with them, building spaces for what calms them.

The whereabouts of Mournee's mother is left open to reader's interpretations.)