The day is coming to an end, and the night is slowly upon me. The correct sentence commonly used would be in the plural - the night slowly upon us. When it comes to my species, currently I should be using singular sentences. I start my scooter and ride on to my home.

It feels weird to drive through the darkness. Very few houses have a light turned on inside them. It must be the inverter. None of their outside lights are on. Normally people don’t give their inverter supply to the outer lights since they remain on for the entire night and can consume away the battery backup of the inverter while one is asleep. I know this because I had asked my grandfather when he was setting up the inverter in his house. It was one of the first in the village. Along with his brothers and cousins, they had procured them at a good price when they hit the market. It was also the time of load shedding.

Every night for half an hour, the power supply would be cut off for a panchayat or a part of the town. This was when I was seven or eight years old. In that half an hour we would all take our chairs outside and sit in the open for thirty minutes. There would be discussions about how the day went, who all came, the latest family gossip, etc. Sometimes I had my cousin stay over. We would play some games in the dark. Hide and seek was difficult owing to the lack of any form of light. Another attraction for us at that young age was the bunch of fireflies that played around. We would capture them and put them in glass bottles. Inside it would glow intermittently with a beautiful intensity. I loved it. Sometimes we would capture more than one and stuff them all into a single bottle. It would serve as a mini torch to walk in the dark.

Darkness scared me when I thought of all the things that lurked in them and how they can attack me. When I was a kid, I used to go outside into the open to pee. There would be a single light outside lighting the entrance and the open area. I would have to walk out of the open area and reach the periphery of where the plantation started to let it out. There the light grew dim and the grass grew thick. Sometimes I bravely traversed the distance and got the job done with confidence. But on some nights, if I hear some sort of a movement or a commotion in the undergrowth, I became really scared. I would be very alert. I would pee in the fastest time possible and run back as soon as it is done. As I reach the foyer I would slow down and walk in as if nothing had happened. I didn’t want them to know I was scared of the sounds I had heard out there. It would only come out as if I am afraid of the dark. I guess I was. I think it went away when I grew up.

There is a slight chill in the air. This is rare. It becomes chilly only after eight or nine after the night has us. The street lights would have a misty halo effect hanging around them. Once when I was coming back with her in the scooter after nine, we felt chilly as soon as we entered our street. She hugged me tightly. Her hug made me feel warm. I had started to feel cold and numb with the chilly air hitting my face, chest, and fingers. That night was a cool night. We didn’t need any AC to fall asleep. We had even lowered the speed of the fan. The windows were kept open for the air to come in. It brought in the slight chillness and made our room bearable.

It feels weird to not have her behind me. I yearn for her presence, her touch, her laughter, her sarcastic comments, and her coy nature. She says she is not like this. This is not how she presents herself to the world. This is just for me because she loves me. In my case, I tell her she is the only one who will ever come to know what makes me me. Only she will know what goes in my head, what I think and why I think, what I have gone through and how it has forged me through these years. I have good friends who are really close to me. But the closest among them doesn’t know a lot about me. They know a part of me, the part that I have kept on display for them. They will never know the rest of it. The part I have displayed is the truth. I haven't portrayed a false image. That is not me. They know me, but not deep enough. The perfect metaphor for this would be the iceberg in the ocean. You only see the smallest part of it on the surface. The majority of it lies below the surface. Only she has the access to it. It is deep. She will take time to fathom it, just like how I will take time to know her. We both know it is difficult to know a person completely and a lifetime might not be enough for it. We both look forward to meeting each other in the next life if it happens.

I enter the small lane leading to our apartment. The darkness throws in a bit of uneasiness. The only light that is penetrating it is the one from my scooter. The feeling is almost similar to driving in a secluded area devoid of any lights, like through an estate. The only difference is you know the darkness is inherent to the area and is always present. It will end as soon as the area ends. It can be pierced and is pierced by the vehicles passing through it.

Here the darkness that was dormant for decades is back in full force. They, which were banished with the arrival of the light-bringers, were soon forgotten. People were afraid of them. All they wanted was some respect. Their age-old enemy - fire - had taken a new form and had become omnipresent. The light bringers could quell away even the slightest pocket of darkness, leaving them no place to reside. They took to the gallows and made it their home. They looked at humanity go about their business, expanding to their domain one at a time.

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I don't know if they know what has become of humanity. They must have felt it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have come up with such brute force. It must have been their doing, to kill the power. Without the thing powering the light-bringers they had the upper hand. They have done it from time to time only to see it up and running again. These small moments of coming back to power could only feed a part of their curbed desires. It could never quench their thirst. They would be at it till they reclaim what was theirs.

I enter our compound, drive to the entry and park my scooter right in front of the stairs. I get out of the scooter with my backpack. It is really dark in here. There are no lights on the driveway as they do not have any power backup. Normally the stairs would be lit. I switched them off in the morning. I switch on the one nearest to me. It doesn’t light up. Just beside it is the calling bell to her cousin's house. I press it. It rings. I walk out into the driveway to see if there is any movement inside. It is pitch black. I will not be able to make out any movement if there was any. I take out my mobile and switch on its flashlight. I shine it in my immediate surroundings. Everything looks in order as it was when I left. I climb the stairs to my home.

In front of the door to my apartment, I fumble with the keys. I find them and unlock the door. I switch on the lights. It dispels the darkness in a jiffy only to unveil the emptiness that has taken over our house. It is more profound than what I had undergone in the morning.

Someone had rightly said that a house is made up of bricks, a home made of souls. This home is made up of our souls. It is where we started our lives. In it lies all our dreams, our conversations, our fights and cries, our turmoils, our desires, our passion and love, and our present. Every day when we wake up together, it feels like the safest place to be in. For her, it is my chest and vice versa. In our embrace, this house becomes our home.

We have spent Sundays idling away here. We would make lunch and do nothing else. We would binge-watch some series that appealed to her or watch a repeat of our favorite superhero movies. We would just lie down in our bed and fall asleep. We would play board games and taunt each other. We would get horny and make love when the passion rises and finish it off in each other's warm embrace. We become emotional knowing how much we love each other and how we have become so close and so tight. We see ourselves getting old together, holding each other's hand as we walk to greet our children and maybe our grandchildren. We dream of all the places we would like to visit, what we will be doing there and how we would always cherish them.

This is not confined to a Sunday. A lot of it happens on a daily basis. When we are together we want to be with each other as much as we can. Reading this you might feel that we have it all going great. That's not true. We do have tough days. Days when I can be insensitive and not care for her. Days when she might be moody and irritated the entire time. Days when we fight over something and stretch to the end of the day. These are normal in a relationship. I have come to realize that. This is something that is common in every relationship. We are not special. When two human beings come together there is going to be a mismatch. And that’s okay. That's how it is. Like yin and yang. I like that analogy because it includes the fact that we are all imperfect and it is two imperfect halves that are coming to make a beautiful whole.

I switch off the light. I walk into the darkness ahead. It takes a few seconds for me to make out the faint silhouette of the sofa ahead of me. I put my bag beside it and slouch into it.

As soon as I hit the sofa, tears start running from my eyes. I let them flow. I have been holding them back for some time now.

I miss her. I really do. At this moment I really don't care what has happened to all the people. All that matters to me is my Anna. If I had her with me, I would have been able to handle this situation in a better way. Knowing I have her beside me gives me the strength and courage to go ahead and achieve anything I set my mind to. She is my rock, my anchor, the one who knows me and gets me, who trusts me and has faith in what I think and do. She is my source of power. You might ask me how can someone be something like this in a short period of time. I don't have an answer to that. I really don't know if people have felt this way with their partners. I know what I have felt and how it has evolved me as a human being. The person I was when I met her two years ago has undergone a beautiful transformation along the way. Some are wary of that, and others might see it in a totally different way. I don't care about that. All I know is that she is the catalyst that makes me grow.

I bend over to cusp my wet face. I wipe my tears away. I take a deep breath to calm myself down. A couple of them helps me to regain composure. A few more and I feel okay. I wipe off the remaining tears. As I take my hands away from my face my gaze happens to fall on the outline of our framed portrait sitting on the table. She had to nag me a lot to get it printed and framed. I clench my teeth and squint my eyes but to no avail. The tears come rolling once again.