I have managed to compose myself for now. The way I see it, there will be times when I will be subjected to emotional and mental stress. I have no idea how it will occur. I know I am not free of them.

I take out a piece of paper from the study table and write down all the observations I have made till now. It looks like this:

> My wife has disappeared along with all the people in the city. I have searched for her in all the possible places I can.

> I tried contacting my friend's family that lives nearby. They have also disappeared.

> This might be a local phenomenon. I can’t be sure of it.

> There is no network of any kind. Regular communication methods have come to a halt. There is no hope of it being revived.

> There is no movement in the streets. Roads are empty. I haven’t seen a single car or bike being driven on the road. (If all the people have disappeared then there would be no one to drive)

> Vehicles can be found lying crashed on the roads or pavements. There is no sign of anyone inside. No sign of any injury.

> Medical college is empty. There are no doctors or patients inside it. No living or dead.

> There are no shops open.

> The traffic signals are still blinking yellow. (I don’t know if this is of any help but still)

> Police stations are empty.

> I picked up a walkie-talkie from one of them. It is working. I verified that the signals are being transmitted by using one of the transmitters in the police jeep. I scanned the channels but there is silence in all of them.

> I sent out a message in the morning saying I will be at Ulloor at ten am. I was there but no one came.

> I have sent out another broadcast for a six pm meet-up.

> Whatever has happened doesn't seem to have affected the animals or birds. They can be seen in their usual numbers. If the situation persists then the domesticated pets might pass away due to starvation. The stray ones might exhibit an increase in wild instincts.

As I wrote down the last point I realized it applied to me also. I had food for tonight. There are biscuits and stuff that can last for a day. There is rice and flour in stock, but the veggies will run out soon. I run to the kitchen and open the shelves one at a time and scan for the resources I have.

There is a packet of Maggie and Hakka noodles. I bought the noodles to give it a try. It remained unused as I didn’t have the necessary ingredients to make it. There are a couple of biscuit packets in a container. I might run out of tea in a week. Coffee, I have a packet to be opened. There are some sachets of hot chocolate also. I see a packet of snacks. I take it out. It has not expired. This will come in handy.

There is rice, wheat, and pulses in good quantities. Currently, I just need to be concerned with my appetite. These should last for a while. The prospect of eating rice without any curries or veggies seems daunting. I don’t like it. If it comes down to such a situation I guess I will eat without any complaints.

Our staple food is rice. We eat it for lunch and dinner. The rice cooked in the morning lasts for the day. Along with it, there would be a gravy - like sambhar or rasam or dal - and veggies. Pickles compliment it occasionally. We have never been a family that requires a non-veg item in every meal. Whenever we bought any kind of meat or fish, it would go on till it finishes after which it takes some days before we buy anything else. Seafood occurred frequently. They would be deep-fried or made into gravies that can last for a couple of days. I had friends who always had a non-veg dish in the tiffins they brought to school. Sometimes egg does the job for me. There were times when my meal consisted of rice, gravy, a veggie, and an omelet. I was perfectly happy with it. I still am. The only thing is I cannot have rice without any gravy. The only kind of rice that doesn't need gravy are the modified versions, like biriyani or Chinese fried rice. I could eat them like that. They had a flavor to them. That's the reason. I need some flavor on my rice when I put it into my mouth. I know how to make rice but I don’t know how to make gravies. I guess I would have to settle with curd. She taught me a method of making the curd a bit more flavourful by putting in crushed ginger and chopped chilies. I liked it.

The flour can be used to make rotis. I know how to make them but haven’t really tried. Back in my college days, we had a small cooking setup. Since I didn’t know how to roll up dough I was given the task to cook them. One of the twins took up the duty to make the dough while the other got on with the curry. Mostly we had egg curry with these rotis. Occasionally on weekends we would buy chicken and fry them. It was cheaper than buying it from a restaurant.

There are some onions and potatoes left over. I open the fridge and take out the vegetable tray. There is a cucumber, some beans and carrots, and okra. I have seen her make sautéed okras. It is quite easy. I think I can make it. Similarly, I can try my hand at the beans and carrots. I just need to get the spices right.

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Four more eggs remain in the egg tray. A couple of cheese slices too. There is a bottle of pickle to be opened. That's it. We keep our fridge lean. We buy only the stuff knowing they would be used in the coming days. If we overstock them, chances are high that they will go bad. We would be forced to discard them. We don’t like this.

I will have to go and get supplies after a couple of days. If the shops remain closed then I will have to find a way to get them. We normally do our shopping from a supermarket nearby. It is in the opposite direction from the Pongumoodu junction. I will find all that I need in it. It should be closed, given the circumstances. I guess I might have to break in. It sounds unethical. But then do I have a choice? I don’t entertain the thought for the time being. I return to what I was writing.

I go through what I have written and try to make some sense of it. One thing that has been bogging my head for quite some time is the crashed vehicles. They didn’t seem to have any kind of a blood stain on them from the broken glass pieces or the sudden impact. There wasn’t a sign of human life in them. I did come across bags and slippers. Nothing else.

What I can make out of it is that these accidents might have happened when the people inside them disappeared. The instant they vanish, the vehicle will continue for a while until it comes across an obstruction. This can be a pavement or a light pole. Two-wheelers would have lost balance and crashed. Autos might have swerved as this was happening. The one that had crashed after the Kannamoola ITI must have lost control, run up the edge of the road, and toppled due to the topographical change.

This makes sense. I had been with her yesterday till eight-thirty in the night. We had dinner, after which I left her near her department and came back home. This phenomenon happened after I returned and the time I left home today.

Another observation that sheds some light is that the traffic signals were blinking yellow. They hadn’t started to function. Usually, they go off by nine at night and come up at eight in the morning. Ulloor junctions signal lights up maybe a bit earlier, I think. Anyways, they mostly are up at eight. Since they haven’t changed, it means they are not automated. Someone manually switches them on. Today nobody did that. Before eight in the morning. So now we have a time frame of nine pm to eight am in which the phenomenon occurred.

Almost all the shops that I came across were closed. There wasn’t a single one open except for the ones near the medical college junction. They were 24-hour medical stores. Shops usually shut in the city by nine. Some restaurants pull it up to ten or ten thirty. Assuming that the last shop closes at ten. And the earliest one opens at seven in the morning - like the restaurants near the medical college. The updated period now is ten to seven.

I think about the lack of a network. Aren’t they supposed to be automated? The networks still show coverage but the cal doesn’t go through. This means the problem lies in the base office where these signals are processed and sent. I really don’t know how telecommunications work. I hope this is the case. From the time I woke up, there has been no network. I was able to send one message to her. It didn’t get delivered. The next one didn’t even go from my mobile. When I got her mobile, I checked it for the messages I had sent. There were none. She too didn't have any network, I did try sending a message from hers. It wasn’t getting sent. Her wifi was also not working. Could the lack of people lead to this? Does every network need humans to keep them going smoothly without any failure?

When I was working in Gujarat, cyclone Tauktae passed over the city I was in. We received warnings from our base office. We stopped our work a day before and braced for it. The night it hit us is a night we will never forget. It started at ten. Our networks were down by eight. The wind was picking up speed as time went by. It was creating havoc in and around us. Half an hour later our power supply went off. The generator kicked in to last for half an hour. It developed a snag and shut down. We were all huddled in our rooms, trying to find some peace and courage. We were safe in our hotel. Soon we started hearing crashing voices. The wind had destroyed a glass wall. Water started seeping into the corridor and into our rooms. I tried to get some sleep. There was no point in remaining awake. But I couldn’t. The howling was really deafening. I got out of the room and looked out into the corridor. I could see my colleagues out of their rooms, looking at each other with a little apprehension on their faces. We got together and talked for a while. It calmed me down. Time had stood still. It seemed forever. More crashes forced us to retire to our rooms. I finally fell asleep at two in the morning.

I woke up at six. The room had become stuffy as the windows were closed. I got out of the room. Daylight was falling in from where the glass wall had been. I walked towards the edge and looked below. The glass was lying shattered in million pieces on the ground. The name board of the hotel had been dislodged from the roof and was lying in the garden. A couple of ornamental trees were uprooted. One of them had fallen on top of a car. The petrol pump just beyond the hotel boundary had lost its roofing. Power lines from the street had fallen on the adjacent buildings. The transformer right beside it was missing. The cyclone was absolutely devastating. It left nothing in its path.

We all heaved a huge sigh of relief in the morning. But we knew our near and dear ones would be worried sick. We had to talk to them. No one among us had any network. Since there was no power supply the towers didn’t function. That evening a group of people from the telecom companies came to assess the situation. On talking to them they said it would take at least a couple of days before the network comes. Luckily that night one of the networks came on. The signal was weak but enough at times to call home. I called her and said all was good. Her voice told me she was worried sick. She had received calls from my friends enquiring about my safety. That compounded her concern. I pacified her and told her the worst was over and we were all safe.

It took three days for my network to resume. The connection was never stable. It was enough to have small conversations. We were able to have a chat with the telecom guys staying in our hotel. They were running the towers with backup generators. Every day they would go, top up the fuel if required and let it run.

Currently, I have power. The network is being shown. But there is no connectivity. I think this is some other issue.