I am not speeding. I am taking my time and driving at a good constant pace. A pace at which I can have a glimpse of the surroundings I am passing through. Today's experience tells me not to expect any change in it. There won’t be any changes to the crashed cars. None of the shops will have opened. The only thing I am looking for is a survivor like me.

I don't know if I should call myself a survivor. I haven't survived anything. In fact, I think I belong to the excluded ones. When everyone disappeared why didn’t I disappear? Why was I left out? Is there some kind of a problem with me, something that cut me out from the list? I don't know. I feel as if all the vanished are looking at me from a grand stadium, watching me and analyzing each and every action of mine. None of them would understand the pain and agony I am harboring inside. Except for Anna. She would know what I would be going through. She would figure it out the moment she sees my face and my actions. She is the only one among the lot who gets me. Even my parents don't know me as much as she does. They have made me and raised me. Yet they miss out on a lot of things.

I have been an independent and mature person from a young age. I had to face certain hardships that made me what I am. I would never want someone to go through it because it can be emotionally hard at that age. I managed to absorb it all and not reflect it in my daily life. I thought it was a normal thing at that age. But it wasn’t. I will never want it to be any other way because these hardships have molded me. It has taught me many things that have become my principles for life. I have lived with them ever since. They have only helped me in my life.

If given an opportunity to go back and change something, I would pass on it. Over time I have realized I will complain over the moments in my life in which I could have taken a different decision or mustered the courage to stick to a decision and see it through. There will always be what-ifs. I don't have any regrets. Whatever has happened has happened the way it has to. That is how I want it to remain.

We all have made decisions we come to regret sooner or later. This is very much human. We all make mistakes. We aren’t perfect sentient beings with a perfect conscience throughout the entire population. We all are different. We have our own quirks and pitfalls. We find it easy to stray away from the normal path, whatever that is. If there is an intergalactic dictionary, the word human would mean the imperfect sentient creatures of planet earth who have a primitive brain residing in a corporeal form capable of achieving marvelous feats of advancement and development all the while succumbing to their basic uncontrolled emotions.

I think what the philosophers were trying to teach us and make us realize is this basic thing. They knew that we as a collective species have the potential to achieve everything we set our eyes on. The last century is a great example. We have had exponential growth and development over these years. We are more advanced than we had ever been. There is no stopping that.

Even though we have achieved such amazing feats, we are still controlled by our basic emotions. We fight over petty things and escalate them to levels unthinkable. We fight wars over resources and to assert dominance of one group of people over the other. We discriminate on the basis of a hundred different factors actively and passively. While doing this we forget the underlying fact that we are all human beings. We all have the same genetic structure with some minor differences. We come in all kinds of colors, heights, weights, and features. But essentially we are the same species.

Imagine a world where everyone had the same features and characteristics, a world without diversity. It would be bland. It would be a repeating scenario throughout, leading to a lack of imagination and creativity. Maybe it will solve the problem of the feeling of superiority amongst people, thus promoting a harmonious endeavor with everlasting peace and brotherhood. Maybe it would make us more advanced beings in a lesser time. We would be working as a collective entity, having no differences, thereby having no hatred or intolerance. Peace would reign over us. We would utilize our resources for the best, taking care of the planet along with our growth, making grand plans to explore the universe and find life in some corner of it, thereby asserting the fact that we are not alone in this cosmos.

I would never want such a life. It is the diversity among humans that makes us beautiful, that makes us what we are. Without diversity, life would be like the shades of grey - interesting at first but boring and depressing later on. If there is an option to make the rainbow, wouldn’t you take that?

I cross PMG and continue straight. I stick to the left road as it splits into two with the two lanes being one way for the traffic in their respective directions. There is an office belonging to one of the mobile networks I own on my left. I slow down and stop in front of it. I wonder if I can get any information on why the network is down. But the office is closed. I can’t see any kind of dish antennae or anything of that sort on the roof that tells me this is a transmitting station. Besides, there is no power now.

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It just dawned on me that the unavailability of power is a big problem. Our whole life is run by electricity. Without power, cities and countries will come to a halt, economies will fall and businesses will be lost. The whole machinery would come to a standstill. Nothing would be made or traded.

I am going back home with the confidence of having power because of the inverter. It is going to run out sooner or later. Then I will have to find ways to keep myself powered.

One thing I can do is find a generator. I can fill it with petrol or diesel and use it to power my house. I don't know how I will be able to do that if I get my hands on a generator. I will have to go through the wiring near the inverter panel to get it working. Yes, I think that should do it. I can keep the generator outside or on the balcony, connect it to the plug point to which the inverter was feeding power and start it. I have seen a generator being used back in my father's office in my childhood. They would fire it up whenever the power went off while something important was happening. Those generators were powered by kerosene. The newer ones aimed at the common user use either petrol or diesel as these are easier to get.

I think I should get a couple of batteries also, the big ones used in cars and inverters. I can keep them charged and ready to use in my inverter. I only have a single power bank with me. We don't use it much. Her phone has a great battery backup. Mine has started to show signs of wear and tear. It has been with me for the past four and a half years. I don't intend to replace it with a new one. My needs are being met without any hassles. Some apps were becoming slow to load, but otherwise, it is fine.

I resume my ride. There is a church on my right. It has used this hillock to its advantage. It is constructed in such an elegant way, it makes its presence felt. It isn’t a big church. That's what we feel when we look at it from the road. Once you enter the premises and see the construction, you come to know how well it is built. The architect has done a fantastic job of building the church in sync with the terrain. I came to know about it when I had the opportunity to attend the wedding of our family friend. Before that, I always assumed the church to be small. Only when I went in for the wedding did I realize how sweet it was.

This stretch of road is much wider than the one going in the opposite direction. I cruise on it and my speed increases automatically. It is a slight downhill stretch. Up ahead I see a car has crashed into a tree on the right side of the road. As I slowly approach it, I see the car has totaled onto the tree truck. Even though it isn’t a big tree, the trunk is solidly thick. Nothing has happened to the tree. The car has become unusable. It is a new car, a top model, cause a lot of airbags have fired up inside it.

I retain my slow speed as I approach Plamoodu junction. Once again the force of habit makes me look to my right side for any incoming vehicles. It will take some time for my mind to register the fact that there are no vehicles on the road anymore. I can close my eyes and drive freely without even thinking of crashing into a vehicle up ahead. Although it sounds amazing and is something that I really love, I would rather not have them. I have wished for empty roads while being stuck in traffic or behind a slow-moving vehicle. I will never wish for it again.

I cross the junction and regain my lost speed. I am reminded of the one time I was riding with Anna behind me. We mostly take our car if we have to travel into the city. We were on our scooter once and had to travel to Palayam. Since it wasn’t practical to go back home and get our car, we decided to go on our scooter. As I was coming down this stretch I was telling her about the bakery and the various shops I used to visit when I was staying nearby.

Our house was in Marappalam. There is a cutting on the road up ahead that leads to a small road on the other side. Take that to reach Marappalam junction. From there if you took the immediate left turn after joining into the main road leading to Kowdiar, you have entered the road that leads to our lane. I knew the place in and out. It has changed a lot. Plenty of new shops have come up. Traffic has also increased because of this. It is quite evident in the long traffic block that gets created on the road leading from this junction up to Pattom signal. The signal turns green only for twenty seconds. This has been the case from the time I was staying here. Recently, when we got stuck here, I checked the signal's time duration. It was the same. Eight years had gone by, traffic has increased. Yet the signal time hasn’t been modified. I kept this info in my mind as I didn’t want to fall prey to it again. If I was coming from Kowdiar junction in my car in the peak hours, I would take the left turn onto this small road and exit onto the main road. The extra distance is worth the time.

My exploration of the day is coming to an end. I can feel it. There is nothing much to be done now. I need to be in Pongumoodu junction before six. I am early and that's good. I don't want to reach there in the nick of time. I don't know if anything positive will happen. I am keeping an open mind with a slight tinge of disappointment. It comes from all that I have seen in this journey. I am ready for it. Whatever happens, I will resume my journey tomorrow. I will cover up the remaining part of the city, visit the homes of my other friends and maybe try to find a way to communicate with my parents and brother and her family.

The five pm sun is sweet. It is not hot. It leaves a pleasant feeling in you. Just like the early morning sun, the feeling is good. On moody days, we crave it. We rainy days, we wish to see the sun peek out from the clouds and shine forth for us. The sun is a powerful entity in many ways. No wonder why every civilization gave it utmost importance. Their lives depended on it.

I feel it much more now. I get a peek of the sun from behind a distant tree. It brings a small smile to my face. I wish it had the power to reset the day and bring back all that is gone.