I am not a lonely person. I never was. I just like my own company. In my childhood, I was totally accustomed to playing with myself. I had lots of toys. After coming back from school, I would eat my lunch and play with my toys. These included cars and action figures. I had quite a few of them. The action figures were my favorite toys. I would make a plot and play it along with them. The house would become where the story was happening. Every object in it would have become something that the figure interacted with. Dark spaces would become the enemies' lair. Tall bookshelves became fortified castles. The bed or the floor was the battleground. There would be skirmishes and encounters in these places. They would fight with each other and continue with the story. If the story finished, another would be made within minutes. There was no dearth of imagination. I could make stories on a whim and live them.

Sometimes my best friend would come over to my house in the evening. Whenever he came we ran to the playground to play something more physically involving. Most of the days it was cricket. Badminton happened when we had new shuttles. Football wasn’t played much. Somedays we explored the little forest and its undergrowth close to where I stayed. It bordered the property I lived in. There were plenty of fruit trees. When it was the season we would dash to pick up the fallen fruits. There was an orange tree in the playground. My bestie would climb it and pluck fruits for us. I wasn’t much of a climber.

If it was cold or gloomy, we would be inside playing one of the board games I had. Later on, we graduated to sitting in front of the TV and playing video games. We would exchange game cartridges and compare our progress. Games with two players were extensively played when he came to my house. That was more fun than playing alone. Sometimes Dad would join me if he was in the mood. One of his friends loved playing video games. He would join me on his occasional visits.

On days when I felt like being outdoors without the company of my bestie, I would make the forest area my playground. I can’t recollect what exactly I did there. All I remember is spending hours in it. I would create some kind of fantasy adventure on those premises and follow it along. Playing video games and watching movies gave me the inspiration to make my own stories and enact them in the wild. I would gather some sticks as my weapons and roam around fighting imaginary monsters and villains. Berries became my potions, trees my watchtowers, the tall grass minions, and the thick bushes my hideouts.

My brother was born when I was nine years old. After he came into our lives things changed. I would spend more time with him and look after him when needed. As he grew up we played together. We did all kinds of things together. After he took his first steps, we would play a game called a superhero. We would drape a white towel from our necks. We would run around the house pretending to be superman or batman and fight bad guys in front of us. As we grew up, we started playing video games. When my Dad bought me a computer, we started playing games on it. He learned to use the mouse and keyboard very quickly. Soon, we could be seen sitting together - him on my lap - and playing games one after the other.

I had friends in school. I was friends with everyone in my class. I didn’t harbor any enmity toward anyone. Over time I made a couple of really close friends. We became a close-knit group. This has been my story throughout. I end up with a few close friends who stick with me.

In school, the lunch breaks were mainly utilized to play rather than eat. We would gobble down our tiffins and head to play cricket. Later on, it became football as I shifted to a school that had a huge ground. Hide and seek was a popular game everywhere. We played it whenever we didn’t have any other options.

I used to think I was an introvert. That is not so. In the tests, I always come across as an introvert. Yet my friends refuse to believe this. They say I didn’t take it properly. I took it with all seriousness because I wanted to know what kind of a person I am.

Later I realized that I am an ambivert leaning over to the introvert side. I can have conversations with strangers and not make them seem awkward. But I take time to make friends. It is a process that needs time and effort from both parties. These friends remain throughout my life. I have a friend from when I was one year old. We were family friends. We parted ways in high school but have maintained the friendship over the years. Currently, he lives in a different city. We rarely meet nowadays. Either I have to visit his city or he has to come to his hometown and maybe meet us here or somewhere in between. We have our own lives to live. When we talk, the conversations last long. We resume from where we left off. There is no break in the continuity of our friendship.

I wish I had someone to talk to now. I have endured situations at my workplace in which I know I won’t be able to contact anyone for a week or more. I haven't felt bad then. I do feel now. In the previous situation, I knew they will always be there. I can call them after the ordeal. They would be a phone call away. I can meet them upon returning home. Their existence itself was soothing.

The vastness and the emptiness of the bus terminal followed by the lack of basic everyday sounds make me feel all alone. The dogs that were sleeping on the floor woke up. They start to bark at something in the distance. They dash towards it. I wonder if I should follow them and see where they are headed. It must be another dog. I don't entertain the thought.

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I walk out of the main entrance. The sunlight that welcomes me is soothingly warm. I look at the sun. I see its outer circle for a while before it blinds me. I shake away the feeling.

I turn and look at the bus terminal. My eyes scale the height of the building. It towers before me, empty. I wonder if I could get access to the roof. I would have a great view of my immediate surroundings. It must be locked. I don't have any tools with me with which I can break in. I make a note to myself on getting some tools ready for all kinds of use. I will have to make a list of it.

I walk back into the terminal and get to my scooter. I turn back and drive out the way I came. I take the left turn and drive past the terminal entrance. On the opposite side of the road, an autorickshaw has come and hit the last one in the line of three rickshaws. It was a skewed hit. The three rickshaws stick to each other.

I take the roundabout and take the exit towards the main entrance of the railway station. I drive into an empty spot near the entrance and get out. I can see that the train information screen is still running. I enter the station.

On the information panel, I go through the trains and their timings. There is a train leaving at four ten from the third platform. The next train on the list is a long-distance one coming from the north of the country. Its scheduled time of arrival is four forty but is running late by half an hour. I look into the platforms from where I stand. A train stands on the third platform. This must be the four-ten one. Another one is behind it.

I traveled a lot in trains when I was studying here. The train was the preferred medium to travel for most of us. Buses would be jam-packed. The probability of getting a seat on a bus was low. Also, train journeys were much more comfortable whether you got a seat or not. Along with your friends, you wouldn’t even know the passing of time. You could also make a reservation and sit or sleep for the whole journey. My friends from the northern end of the state had to book tickets in advance as they had to do overnight journeys to reach their homes.

This information panel was of great use when catching trains back then. It was initially a digital panel made up of small red led lights that displayed the information in a very basic manner. Now it is basically a large TV screen that is connected to a computer displaying the information. It looks good though.

The screen showed the trains leaving or arriving at the current time. If a train left or arrived with the station being its end destination, its name would be removed from the list within five minutes, maybe before that. In some stations, I have seen that they write departed or arrived next to the train name respectively. Wherever there wasn’t a digital display panel, the person who looked after the train table would rub it off from the display board. Even here, there is a whiteboard right next to the information counter. The person who sits inside updates it frequently.

With this information, I can say that the trains before four ten had left or arrived. There aren’t many trains after midnight. After the last one around twelve, the next one starts early in the morning, around three thirty, four. They vary daily. Most of them are long-distance trains. There have been a lot of changes in the timetable following the pandemic. I really don't know much about it now. I have stopped keeping a track of trains after the pandemic.

If I assume that the last train left or arrived at midnight, the time frame stretches from twelve to four ten. A decrease of five minutes from the one I had calculated at the bus stand. Not much but still encouraging. I have slowly started to figure out the occurrence of the disappearance. I need to keep it going. It keeps me distracted from all the emotional upheaval that has built up inside me.

I walk into the platform. Memories rush through me. I contain them all. I walk in the direction of Kollam, the north. The station has changed from the last time I saw it. That was two years ago. Two years of the pandemic.

The empty railway station reminds me of the movie Train to Busan. I watched it only recently. I liked it. It is made well. The ending got me. I had a few tears in my eyes.

I come across the seating arrangement laid out on the platform. They are all empty. Some of the seats have a bag or a plastic cover right next to them. Some of them have slippers or a bottle in their immediate vicinity. Things that people kept as they took a seat. There aren’t many though. They are all scattered among the long row of chairs. The time was as such. I take a bottle of water from the seat near to me and finish it. I crush it and throw it in the dustbin in the corner. I continue with my walk.

I pass the first overbridge that connects the platforms. This is the one closest to the entrance and so the most used one. The other one is at the end I am walking to. It extends after the last platform all the way to the secondary entrance. You use this overbridge if you want to exit towards East Fort and the local bus stand. Thambanoor bus stand caters more to the needs of long-distance passengers and the ones traveling to the fringes of the district. For traveling in the city, the white state buses ply from the East Fort bus stand. After deboarding our train, we would have our dinner and walk to the East Fort bus stand to catch the bus that would drop us in front of the college or nearer to our hostel. If we take a bus from Thambanoor, it would drop us on the main road, leaving us to walk the odd kilometer and more just to reach the college front. Then there is the distance to our hostel. No one liked the ordeal, especially when we were carrying luggage.

I reach the second overbridge. There are a couple of shops near it. They are closed. They used to remain open throughout the day. Maybe they couldn't sustain their business owing to the lack of passengers during the pandemic. Things were getting better. The worst days are gone. The future will be better. I don't know what future I am in now.