I wake up to the six o’clock alarm. I promptly turn it off and go back to sleep. Three more alarms follow before I finally wake up at seven. The succession of alarms has been something I have kept from my college days. The joy of waking up to the first alarm and knowing you have time in your hand to maybe fall asleep for some more time is the best feeling ever. I am kinda addicted to it. My wife doesn't disapprove of it, so I guess I am good there.

  I check my phone for any messages from her. She is doing her night shift. It's the first of the month. She has one more. She intends to take it after I leave for work. There aren’t any messages from her. I ping her on WhatsApp. A single tick appears. It doesn’t turn double. It certainly won’t turn blue.

  I have kept that feature off for quite some time now. I have understood that if it is on then people would expect you to reply after they see their ticks turn blue. Cause you have read their message. I don’t like that. I want to reply when I want to. That is how I am now. Earlier, I used to be prompt in replying. I felt that if one didn’t reply within a few minutes then it gave a bad feeling to the sender. So I would religiously reply to the messages I got. One day I realized that even though I was following this, the same wasn’t being reciprocated. Initially, I felt bad. I took a bit of time to process this and finally came to the conclusion that people are busy with their lives. I can’t go about demanding that they reply to my messages when they see them.

  I applied this to myself. I wouldn’t reply immediately. I would take my time and reply. I received a bit of flak for this from some of my close friends but other than that no one else noticed. I switched off the blue ticks once and for all. It has remained like that ever since. My wife has asked me to switch it on. But I didn’t. She gave me the looks and asked me the reason for it. I gave her my thought on it. She let it go. So yeah, that’s the story with the blue ticks.

  It's been five minutes now. I am scrolling through my Instagram feed. Nothing new or interesting, just a few stories from my friends across the globe. I revert back to WhatsApp. No double tick yet. I keep the phone aside, pull on my bed sheet and go back to sleep. I have another twenty minutes. She normally gets relieved by seven-forty. Her call comes around that time, to come and pick her up. I just have to get up, brush my teeth, and wear my pants and tee. I will reach her under ten minutes. We should be back by quarter past eight. There are plans to have breakfast from a restaurant - Masala dosa from Indian Coffee House. I am not a big fan of masala dosa. I would rather prefer a good ghee roast with sambar and chutneys - the more the merrier - than masala dosa. But here the masala has beetroot in it, a twist to the usual tale of masala dosas. Normally they make the masala filling with potatoes and the basic condiments. Here they put beetroot in the masala, giving it a dark purplish color along with a different taste. Their coffee is also great. And vada too. She likes to have a vada always. It is kind of like her staple order. Today I might try puri masala.

  I fall asleep and wake up to the seven-thirty alarm. Once again I stretch out my arms and switch it off. The sun is bright and shining in from the window. I pick up the phone and unlock it. It takes me to WhatsApp. I see that the message hasn’t been delivered yet. I open her chat and text her once again, calling out her name and stretching her last letter, followed by full stops. I send it. The waiting symbol shows up and stays. I look at it hard. Then I look at the top of the screen. Both my networks are up. I am using the internet in the primary one. I turn my phone into airplane mode and wait for a few seconds before I turn it back on. It took some time for the network to get established. That doesn't happen normally. I guess there is some issue with the network this morning. Maybe that is why the message isn’t getting delivered. Or the servers might have crashed. I am in no mood to go and search for it on the internet. If something of that sort has happened, then I will get to know about it as the day goes by. It is sure to come on Twitter as hot news, memes, and whatnot. Nowadays content gets created and destroyed in seconds. Anyways I laze around in my bed. Maybe her battery must be down and she has switched off her internet to conserve it. I think I should give her a call and ask her when to come. She does get late some days when there are some last-minute problems with her patients and she has to cater to their needs and sit and update them in the register.

  This duty was scheduled for the day before yesterday. It was our first wedding anniversary. She managed to exchange it with her colleague. We went out for a nice dinner at one of the fancy restaurants in the town. With all the Covid cases rising, it was difficult to find a good place. But we had been to one and we really liked the ambience and the food. We couldn’t sit at the poolside on that occasion, as a wedding reception was underway. This time we got to. It was really nice. Although we felt a bit humid when we sat down, we got over it soon enough. It felt soothing and peaceful. There wasn’t much crowd, which was a bonus for us. It felt as if the place was ours. We sat and chatted away while the food arrived. We ordered the non-veg platter. It was a sure-shot dish that couldn’t go wrong. Whenever we go out to some fancy restaurants we try their platter. It has been one of our things. From all the gathered experiences, the platter being offered here was one of the best. For the next dish, we decided to go for a beef steak. She was apprehensive about it. I hoped for it to turn out well. It did. She liked it. When it came to the button mushrooms that were served alongside the steak, she resorted to having a single bite of it. I had to gobble down the rest of them. She is not a mushroom person.

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  The highlight of the evening was none of this. It came after dinner. While we were leaving, we decided to click a few selfies. After a couple of them, I asked her to stand near a wall that had a nice texture to it. The light was falling in a good way. I clicked a couple of her pictures and boy, they turned out to be the best ones I have clicked of her to date. She wholeheartedly agreed to it. She was quick to point out to me that I had taken a whole year to click a good picture of her. She was elated. I could see it on her face. I was happy too. I will probably print it and stick it to our album. We have an empty album lying around. We have decided to fill it with our photos as and when we print them. That is a task in itself, although it has become way easier now. It's just that I do get lazy at times and then I postponed it infinitely. Then something or the other finally leads me to take initiative and get it done. It has been my life story. To sit and procrastinate away time is my hobby.

  I have been a lazy bum from the beginning. During my school days, I was much more active. I used to go out and play football daily in the evening with my friends for nearly two hours. Then I would come back, take a bath, sit and watch something. I might open my PC and play something on it. That depends on whether I have my exams approaching or not. I mostly never studied on a daily basis. Sometimes I did. But if I felt I was lacking in something and was feeling left behind, unable to grasp, or unable to solve, then I would sit and study and understand it and solve it. I would not procrastinate then. Now, I cannot.

  I dial her number. The call gets dropped in an instant. I dial it again. Same thing. I check for the network. Three-fourths of it are being shown. That should do it, and yet the call is not getting connected. I try calling her with the other network. Normally I use the primary one. It has been my number from 2008 onwards. I haven’t changed it nor have I ported to another network. I would have happily remained in it if it weren’t for their unwillingness to upgrade and update themselves when the world around them was doing so. A new competitor came into play and lured us all in. I too followed the lot and took their sim card after I got a new phone. My previous one didn’t have the capacity to handle the new tech. So I took the new network and have been using it as my mobile internet. It hasn’t disappointed me yet. It has consistently delivered. Although in one situation it failed. So did the other networks. Except for my primary one. It helped us to recover something we thought we had lost. That story is for some other day.

  I switched my networks and dial her. I hear a couple of beeps after which the phone goes silent. No sounds at all. I check the screen to see if the call had been dropped. It hasn’t. The call wasn’t picked up. The call timer isn’t visible. Also, my phone gives a small vibration whenever the call gets picked up. So far it has done nothing of that sort. I cut the call and dial again. It's the same thing. I sense a bit of frustration rising in me.

  I open WhatsApp and try giving her a voice call. I knew the chances of the call getting connected were less as the message hasn’t gone yet. The hourglass or whatever that symbol is called is displayed next to the message. The call doesn’t connect. The Internet is down. I switch to my primary network. It has a meager internet pack in it which is to be used in dire times, like this one. It takes a whole minute for the network to realize that it has to provide me with internet services. I sometimes feel it gets lazy if I don’t use it. Or is it my phone, I don’t know. It is slow. And in these fast times, it is kinda unacceptable.

  Finally, the networks switch. But I don’t see any 4G, 3G, H, or H+ symbols on top of my network bar. This one is already down. I decide to send a message though. What if it goes? One can always hope for the best. Actually one should always hope for the best. I am an optimistic person. I type out the message and send it. Nothing happens.

  So both my internet connectivity is down. The calls are not going through even though the network is being shown. I get up from the bed finally. I am awake now and frustrated at the turn of events. I need to somehow get in contact with my wife. I hope she is doing the same thing now. I get up from the bed and walk to the wash basin to brush my teeth.

  Our house owner likes to keep birds as his pets. Today their chirping is on the lower side. Apart from that, there are no other sounds. The trees rustle as a breeze passes by. It lingers around for a few minutes. The sound of my brushing is the loudest now. I gargle and finish it. The breeze dies out. The birds stop chirping. In that instant, an eerie silence descends for a second. I have never felt anything like it. I can’t even explain it. The thought stays inside my head for those few seconds after which it disappears. I face the mirror. I see myself, like always. Nothing has changed.