The Free Table at Dugri Road

The quote from the glass-fronted bakery on the canal bypass was printed on thermal receipt paper: ₹350 minimum cover per head, redeemable against beverages and bakery items, two hours maximum seating on terrace benches.

Harpreet smoothed the slip against his steering wheel. Most of the students who had signed up for the reading session had marked city buses or bicycles under travel mode.

He tapped his phone against the dashboard and looked through the windshield at the alternative: the veranda of the district pensioners' union hall off Dugri Road.

The union hall cost nothing. Master Gurdial had handed him the mortise key yesterday with a simple understanding: sweep the fallen leaves beforehand and leave the latch secure. But the hall had no air conditioning. The ceiling fans hung high from lime-washed rafters, and the approach lane was two hundred metres of broken brick ballast flanked by a deep municipal drainage ditch.

At ten in the morning, Simran texted him from the university library: three graduate students wanted to know if they needed cash for the venue. If it was ₹350, they planned to stay in the hostel canteen instead.

Harpreet looked down at the receipt. The bakery had terrazzo flooring, double-glazed glass that muted the bypass traffic, upholstered armchairs, and a graded concrete ramp leading smoothly from the paved lot to the entrance. If he hosted it there, the gathering would be calm, clean, and comfortable.

"Thirty-two chairs," the manager had told him on Friday. "Provided everyone orders."

For a student living on a tight hostel mess allowance, a single compulsory pastry was two days of staple meals.

Harpreet turned the ignition key of his car and drove toward Dugri Road.

He parked short of the hall where the municipal trench cut across the road. The open excavation exposed cracked drainage pipes, loose earth, and piles of broken aggregate. He carried his broom through the gate, unlocked the veranda, and began wiping the stone dust from the metal folding chairs.

At a quarter to four, Simran arrived on her scooter. She parked near the entrance, carried her books up the steps, and looked at the bare floor and the slow rotation of the overhead blades.

"Preet couldn't make it," Simran said, setting her helmet on a sill. "She brought her sister, who uses a motorized wheelchair, to the lane head, but the ditch cuts clean across both tracks. There's no safe footing through the rubble."

Harpreet set down his duster. "The trench?"

"It's three feet deep with loose clay on either side," Simran said. "Preet tried to guide the chair through, but it nearly tipped. They had to turn back home."

Harpreet looked out at the street. He had chosen the hall because it didn't levy a gatekeeper's tax on the students. But in avoiding the commercial price barrier, he had run straight into a physical one, trading an economic exclusion for an infrastructural barrier.

"I should have inspected the crossing this morning instead of assuming it was walkable," Harpreet said.

"A couple of men from the tea stall laid some scaffolding boards across the ditch," Simran said. "People on foot are balancing across them, but they bounce under weight. You can't roll a chair over loose wood above an open pit."

"No," Harpreet said. "That's an accident waiting to happen."

By four-fifteen, a dozen readers were settled along the veranda. Nobody was asked to show a receipt. Two college boys shared cold water from a plastic flask. A clerk from the irrigation office sat on a bench with a paperback translation of Tolstoy. The pages turned against the hum of the overhead fans and the distant rumble of trucks on the bypass.

Harpreet sat on the raised sill near the door, his notes resting across his knees. He looked at the circle of students reading quietly without fear of being moved along, and then at the empty space beside Simran where Preet and her sister should have been.

When the session ended at six, he locked the veranda grille. While Simran waited by her scooter, Harpreet dialed Preet's number. When Preet answered, he apologized directly for not inspecting the approach earlier and told her what had happened with the trench.

"We couldn't risk the casters over the clay," Preet said. "The frame is nearly eighty kilos with the battery."

"I know," Harpreet said. "That was my fault. We are not meeting here next week."

He called the caretaker of the municipal reading room near the bus terminal—a single-story hall with a paved apron and no steps—to check if their side room was free on Sunday mornings. The caretaker told him the schedule was full through the month.

Harpreet ended the call and walked back to where Simran was strapping on her helmet.

"The bus terminal room is booked," he told her. "Until I can verify a hall that is genuinely step-free and free of cost, we'll postpone next Sunday's session. I'll send an update to the group tonight so no one travels out for nothing."