It is noon. The morning half has been spent trying to find her. I have tried searching for her in all the possible places I can think of. She is nowhere to be found. Just like how I haven’t seen a single human being since I got out. I am lost. I don’t know what to do. I need to pick myself up. I can’t let this take over me.

The food helps me to calm down. I wash the dishes and keep them out for drying. There are clothes to be washed in the washing machine. They can wait. My laptop is lying on the study table. I pick it up and the 4G dongle and turn them on. The network symbol is blinking red. My laptop gets connected to it and immediately shows me the message that there is no internet in this network.

I want to get some kind of information from anywhere about what is happening. We don’t have a cable tv subscription at home. Nowadays its contents are available on the internet. We use the internet for our needs. I take out the two mobiles from my pocket and lay them on the table. There are no networks in them. I pick up her bag from the front and pull out its contents. Her phone is low on charge. I take her charger and plug them in for charging. I keep mine also.

I switch between the channels of the walkie-talkie. There is absolute silence. I return back to the main channel and broadcast another message:

‘If anyone out there is listening to this then please do respond on channel 5. If you are unable to respond, then know that I will be in Pongumoodu junction at six in the evening. I will be waiting for you.’

I keep the walkie-talkie for charging in its charging case.

I think about my family and friends. I have no way of communicating with them. It kind of feels weird. The knowledge that the only mode of communication you had with your near and dear ones was a small handheld device and a singular network structure makes me wonder why didn’t we think of having some other simple medium. Whether it is calling or messaging or anything, we are solely dependent on the internet. Landlines have become obsolete. I have them at my workplace. It is the only place where I use it. We don’t have a landline here, nor at our homes. Our homes had them. They were disconnected as the use of mobile networks became easier and cheaper.

There should have been some sort of network that used some other means to communicate. Like pigeons. They are the oldest form of communication. In this sort of situation, they can come in very handy. Although it would take time, something is better than nothing. I am not sure how successful it would be. I think it might only be useful for short distances. I don’t think a pigeon will fly all the way to my hometown and deliver a message.

I don’t know what I am thinking. I guess I am slowly losing my mind. I quickly close my laptop and dash into the bedroom. I fling myself into the bed and bury my face in a pillow. I hope I fall asleep so that when I wake up it would all have been just a really bad dream.

I love sleeping. It is the best thing in the world. To be all cozy in your bed and to drift into a dream world has no substitutes. I dream a lot. I dream about a whole variety of stuff. If I wake up from the dream, I just need to go back to sleep and I would continue from where I had left off. This makes me wonder if I was dreaming just before I woke up. I don’t know. Sometimes I am able to recollect my dreams after I wake up. If I don't note it down or remind myself of it throughout the day, I forget it. In that way, they don’t stay. But I know I had dreamt that night.

Most of my dreams have a timeline of a few hours to a couple of days. Whatever happens in this window is what I see. I am not frequented by nightmares. If I have one then it would mostly be related to snakes. I am afraid of them. I don’t like them. These nightmares become so real that I wake up in the dark and find it very difficult to get a hold of my surroundings. I feel as if it is near me, maybe under my bed. I remain in a petrified state, unable to move. It takes some time to come out of it. I go back to my normal sleep soon after. That dream ends there. I might even see a new one.

In my childhood, there have been instances of wetting my bed in sleep. I couldn’t control it. I felt ashamed and wished I could stop it from happening. Mother would take me to the washroom to pee before I slept. It did work. Sometimes it would reoccur. Once when I was dreaming, I was with my Grandpa in his workshop. I was playing around with him. A few minutes later he had to go to the washroom. He asked me if I wanted to use it too. I went with him and peed. I woke up immediately from my sleep feeling the wetness seep through my pajamas. I had wet my bed. This happened a few more times. The scenario would be different but it would be my Grandpa who would initiate it. The repeated occurrences made me sit and think of what was happening. I had to either stop the dream from happening or get out of it when the chain of actions leading to it starts to occur. The next time when I was having a similar dream, I held the instinct to follow the actions and somehow woke up. It worked. I had figured it out. Since then, I have never wet my bed. I also took it to myself to empty my bladder before I went to bed.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I wake up with a jolt. It takes a few seconds to orient myself to the surroundings. I am in our bed. I was sweating. The fan isn’t turned on. I can bear that. I look at the time. It’s half past one. I get up and go into the main hall, wash my face and sit down next to the table where the mobiles were being charged. I check them for any updates. Nothing. No network. Nothing had changed. It certainly isn’t a dream. I drink some water but I wish I had something else to drink. I get up and take a look in the fridge. There is a packet of chocolate milk shake in it. I take it out.

It reminds me of her. She is a chocolate person. It is the only flavor that she likes. She hates berries or anything colored. Anything made of chocolate is a safe bet to buy for her. It is her comfort flavor.

When I came to know about this, I started gravitating toward it. I love all flavors. I don’t have a particular favorite one. If we go into an ice cream shop I would like to try each and every flavor they have. If it comes to selecting one then I am stuck in a paradox of choice. For her, it is very easy. She would try only the chocolate flavors and pick among them. Having been reunited with chocolate, I started rediscovering my love for the flavor. It had lost its charm somewhere down the lane but because of her, it was back with a bang. The used ice cream tubs that can be found in our kitchen are all chocolate-flavored ones.

In bakeries, I would scout for good chocolate pastries for her. While buying donuts I would order those that had chocolate on them. I would avoid all other flavors. She liked the donuts of a certain bakery that was in our hometown. Whenever we could, we would buy them and finish them as quickly as possible. I was a bit skeptical when she declared that it was the best chocolate donut ever. I had tried the big brands. When I tasted this, I understood why she wasn’t wrong. We have tried to find something that comes close to it here but in vain. We found a couple of shops that had good ones. But nothing could beat it.

She is a die-hard fan of Diary Milk. It can cheer her up instantly. Once opened it doesn’t last long. She likes the Silk version the most. In the supermarket, we came upon Amul’s chocolate bars. We tried their Belgian chocolate bar. She liked it. Even in chocolate bars, she likes plain ones. Once I tried their chocolate bar with a tinge of orange flavor. She liked that. It finished off like Silk. I felt happy. I feel happy whenever I find out something she likes. This becomes a bit of a problem when we get to desserts in restaurants after our meal. They might not have anything exciting in the chocolate division. She might try out some of the other stuff if I insist her.

There is a bakery while coming back from her college. It is a reputed one. It is one of the oldest ones in the city. Sometimes when we are leaving for our hometown, we stop here to buy cakes and sweets for our families after having picked her up from her department. We also buy a parcel of fried rice and chicken fry to eat before we start our journey. It doesn’t make sense to go back home and order in. The wait for it to get delivered and consume seems tedious as we are getting ready. The chicken fry is delicious. She loves it. It is spicy and deep-fried. Together they are a great combination in just the right quantity for the two of us.

As I open the drink, I look inside the fridge. There is some leftover rice, sautéed cabbage, and gravy. I am not feeling hungry. On the door rack, there are a couple of bottles of beer and kombucha. She likes to drink the kombucha occasionally Initially I had bought it for her to drink along with me whenever I had a beer. I don’t like to drink alone. I need a proper company for drinking. Gone are the days when I could chug down two bottles of beer in a sitting. Now I find it difficult to finish off a single one. There was a bottle of beer lying in the fridge for nearly four months from the time I had bought it. Then there was another one that had a little bit remaining. It was closed and kept for a month. I never bothered to even take it out and look at it. I thought it wasn’t opened. I got to know about it when she took it out and asked if I was finishing what remained. It was stale. I threw it.

Similarly, I brought a bottle of whisky from my home last June. It is yet to be opened. In this heat, I always prefer a cold beer. I had this idea of stocking up the fridge with cold beers when I have a place for myself. They would come out on game nights or whenever my friends come over. It isn’t that way. I now feel it is something I would have done enthusiastically in my bachelor days, when I was in my early twenties, fresh out of college. As time passed, the thrill of having such a setting slowly diminished. Now the occasional ones with her or my friends are all that I look forward to. A nice place with a great ambiance and the right people makes the occasion that much sweeter. The drink then becomes secondary. It just acts as a conduit for the stories to flow and memories to be created.