It’s two in the afternoon. The mobiles have been fully charged even though they remain useless. There is no response from the walkie-talkie. It remains silent. I had kept it on at full volume while charging. I should have picked up one more as a backup. I hope the battery lasts long. It doesn’t have a battery charge indicator. I assume it would last for a day or more.

I draw upon the conclusion of the city becoming a ghost town from the silence of the walkie-talkie. I have not received any sort of a message or an attempt to communicate either from the police or from someone who has a walkie-talkie tuned to this channel. The Ham radio operators can be included in the same category. I don’t know if there are any in the city.

I have taken the range of the walkie-talkie to be the city limits. It can be more or less. I know for a fact that ships communicate using the radio. I am not sure if they use the same frequency or if it is some other spectrum with added features. This radio should cover a radius of five kilometers at least.

I think I should go out into the city - go to the railway station, bus stand, and places that are supposed to have people throughout the day. Or should I go to my hometown? I haven’t entertained the possibility yet. I know I have no information about my parents, whether they are still there or not. Going there would mean leaving Trivandrum. I am hesitant to do that. I feel she is here only. If I have to find her, I should be looking for her in the city. I think I should keep aside these two days to look around for her and then maybe think of going to my hometown. If my parents are good, they would be worried sick when they cannot contact us. Thinking about it somehow gives me the creepy feeling that they too have disappeared. I don’t want to entertain this but under the circumstances, the thought will find relevance as time passes by.

This automatically applies to everyone I know. Whenever I try to limit the occurrence of this phenomenon to the city in my head, there is a part of me saying this is not localized. It is a global phenomenon. I find myself alone in this world. The possibilities of such a mass-scale event baffle me. A billion people disappearing all of a sudden from this planet sounds very much impossible. There might be survivors like me. I don’t know why I survived. I definitely don’t have any superpowers. Nor am I extraordinary in any way. I believe there are people out there waiting to be found, or rescued from this insane situation. For this, I need to get out on the road and explore. I need to keep sending out messages and do everything I can.

I get up and grab her bag from the hall. I need to put in some supplies. I take the snack packet and water bottle from the kitchen counter. Next, I dump the chargers for the mobiles and the walkie-talkie. I go in and take out a boxer, a couple of tees, and shorts from my cupboard. This is in case of a contingency. I also take out the torchlight from under the bed. It hasn’t been used in a long time. I switch it on to see if it has any charge left. It shines brightly.

I will be taking the scooter. It is the best choice to navigate the road. I am sure of coming across more crashes and roadblocks along the way. I might even come across bigger vehicles. Maybe a bus or a lorry. The route I took in the morning was a local route. Buses stop their service by ten. Even though medical college is functional and sees a lot of people, buses stop plying. All the long-distance night buses take the Pattom - Kesavadasapuram route. From here they either turn towards Kollam along the NH or towards Kottarakara along the MC Road. I will be taking this route when I leave now.

I take out my mobile and open up google maps. Even though there is no network it still loads. It has been some days since I cleared its cache. I play around with the map and look at a few places in detail. The map was able to zoom in on them up to a certain degree after which it stops. It seems this part of Trivandrum is preloaded. In case of assistance, I can surely use this.

I sling the bag over the shoulder and walk to the door. Normally, before this, I would have to wear pants and a tee. I am mostly in my shorts and a loose sleeveless whenever I am at home. It has been a habit for a long time. I prefer this as it keeps me cool. If someone comes or if I have to go down or up on the terrace to pick up the clothes, I would wear a lungi on top of my shorts in a flash. I then remove them the moment I am back home. Anna says the first thing I do is something everyone else does the last on entering their homes. It has become a force of habit.

Today I didn’t do this ritual. I was in a different mood. Compared to that, I feel much better now. I am being rational and practical and not letting my emotions take over. If they do then I am pretty sure I will be sulking away for some time. I don’t want to waste time. It might seem as if I have a lot of time. But I don’t.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I get out, close the door and lock the house. I wear my crocs. Before I take the stairs, I ring the bell of the opposite house. I hear it ring. There is no movement or sound. I try for some more time, but I don’t hear anything. It is empty.

I walk down and ring the bell of the only occupied house on the first floor. The couple who stays here have their parents with them. I had seen the guy's father once. There is no response from inside. I ring it a couple of times more. Nothing here too.

On the ground floor, I had checked on her cousin's house. The reception desk is empty. The manager hasn’t come. I ring the bell of the opposite house. No response. I get out and decide to have a look inside the house. The curtains were drawn on the closed windows. I couldn’t make out anything inside. It is dark. I thought about going over and checking out my house owner and his family. He stays just beside our apartment building. There is an entrance from this property to his. I decide to chuck it for now.

Previously I could see some kind of activity going on on the property adjacent to ours. It belonged to two families. Each had a house in them. One was closer to our boundary. Two families were staying in the two-storied houses. I don’t know who they are. From our house we see the family staying upstairs take to the roof to play Badminton or some other game in the evening. They have two daughters. They jump around loudly after school and play amongst themselves

The other house is a bit away. Their kitchen faces us. They have a small kitchen garden. It is always being tended to. Whenever I go out I always find someone working on it. They have a papaya tree very close to the boundary wall. It is really tall for a papaya tree. Couple of months ago it was bearing lots of fruit. I wondered if the stalk could take the weight of the fruits. A few days later they came and plucked out a lot of them. They only managed to salvage a few. The rest fell from their grasp and squished on impact. It had also become an attraction for bats in the evening. A couple of them could be seen hanging on it, eating away at the ripe ones.

Today their doors and windows are closed. No one is tending the garden. An eerie silence has taken over the environment.

Except for our house owner, no one has any pets in their homes. He loves birds. He has some lovebirds, a parakeet, and a few more on his balcony. They chatter away throughout the day. I could hear them when I call her from my workplace. Their high-pitched noise can be heard and recognized easily. Their cries are the only thing that pierces the silence surrounding me.

I work in an environment that has a lot of sound pollution. We use earplugs to protect ourselves from their negative impact. Yet we are dependent on these sounds to a very good extent. With experience, the sound a machine makes gives you a fair idea of its operation and functioning. There have been occasions where the operator has been able to identify the slight change in the sound produced and was able to stop it before it became worse and lead to something unwanted. The same goes for the vehicles we drive. Expert mechanics can drive your vehicle for a minute and tell you all the problems it has. They have the keenest of ears in their fields.

We have become dependent on sounds whether we like it or not. They have become an integral part of our life. The change in tone of a mixer grinder can tell you whether it is grinding the object or not. The occasional clinking in the normal operation of the washing machine tells you about the loose change in it. Sound is everywhere. We have tamed it and made music out of it. Go down to the bare bones of any music, there is sound. What is sound? It is the oscillation of the air or a medium in a definitive manner. A vibration that propagates through a medium.

We are subject to a million sounds daily. Some we like, others we don’t. Most of them we don’t even acknowledge. If I take a deep breath I can listen to how I inhale. On my mobile, I can play music, create sounds, recognize them, duplicate them, and send and receive them.

To think of a world without sound is neigh impossible. Even if there wasn’t a single life form, there would still be sound. Sounds of volcanoes erupting, of waves hitting the shore, of avalanches, of rivers and streams running down mountains, of the rain falling on the earth and everything on it. It is a part of nature. Sound in its various forms has been given much importance in traditions and religions. It has also made its way into prominent fiction and fantasies where it sees itself as the beginning of lore. Before everything else there was sound.

As I stand here in the absence of a major portion of it, I am literally traveling in time. Traveling to a time when sound was scarce and hadn’t become such integral to our lives. There is beauty in this, no doubt. The lack of sounds surely comes across as eerie. But give it time and maybe it can grow on you. We all have moments like these in our life we come to treasure - moments where silence is the most beautiful thing ever. I have had them on the countless journeys I have taken to the various parts of the country. The silence in every place is different. In my hometown, the road I took for a walk offered places of utter silence along the way. I could sit there and enjoy it.

I am not complaining about the lack of sound or the abundance of it. I was just saying that it is something we have taken for granted. I need sound when I will be riding my scooter. I need it to gauge my throttle and speed. I need it to know if some other vehicle is approaching behind me. I need it for the safe passage ahead. It is just that I am acknowledging the sounds in my life that I have ignored. Deep inside I wish they would all return, signaling the end of this phenomenon and making it normal.