It doesn’t take time for me to get out of bed. I was comfortable in the curled-up position but I couldn’t control my racing mind. I needed to find a distraction, do something to kill time. For that, I needed to get out of bed first of all. I did that and go to the main hall.

I sit down at the dining table. I pick up my phone and unlock it. I access my gallery. I scroll through the photos I have clicked recently. There isn’t much. I have stopped clicking on my mobile. The camera is kind of old and outdated. If I have to buy a new mobile I would prioritize the camera in it. I had installed a third-party modded camera app in it which enabled me to maximize the power of the camera so as to click better photos. The phone has a single camera. Nowadays every mobile has more than one. The app did a lot of backend work to make the pictures look amazing. It had become my primary camera app. The next one I am buying should be able to harness the power of this app. I have a few in mind, but it can wait.

I have been using her mobile to click pictures. Even though her phone isn’t a high-end one, the cameras housed in it are good. I like the wide-angle camera. It offers a good sweeping view. I have started to love clicking landscapes in it. She uploads all of them to the cloud and shares them in our common account. If I had internet I could access them on my phone.

I exit from my gallery and open WhatsApp. This is another place where we share our pictures, memes, stickers, gifs, and whatnot. I see an exclamation mark right next to the unsent message. I click it. It says the message was not sent. I know that. I didn’t need extra confirmation for that. It also displays the added option to delete it or try again. I click on the try again option. I am keeping my hopes up, even if there aren’t any.

I browse through the messages we exchanged recently. They are mostly smileys of hugs and kisses and hearts. She was feeling sleepy through our video call. I was feeling sleepy too. The time was nearing midnight. When she realized she was dozing off intermittently during the call, she urged me to keep the call and go to sleep. I said I can wait for her to fall asleep. She said that was okay and I should get rest. I agreed to it and kept the call. Emojis followed that.

Before that, her messages were about when I would be coming to meet her. I clicked on her profile and accessed the media tab. A few seconds later all our shared media was displayed. Her photos were the major part of it. I clicked on the first one that caught my attention. It was a candid picture from our anniversary night. She was saying something to me when I clicked it, which resulted in a weird expression. It reminded me of her reaction when she saw it later on. She said in a coy tone - You really know how to click my bad pics. I laughed at it. But then she was happy with the couple of pictures that had turned out well.

I swipe left. The next picture is of us. Another candid one. We had wound our hands on each other's back and clicked it. Like always, only one from the many that were clicked came out satisfactory. All others were weird and funny. But they stay with us. We never delete them. We keep them as part of our memories. She has more of them compared to mine. I somehow manage to look okay in the pictures. She feels she doesn’t. That is so wrong. She is the animated one among us. I can't come up with all the expressions she can.

The next one is a solo picture of mine that she had clicked. I am sitting on the sofa in the foyer of the hotel. It turned out well. I really like it. She had orchestrated that picture. As we were departing she came upon this beige sofa lying in the foyer. She instantly instructed me to go and sit on it for her to click on me. When the pictures came out I was impressed by her observational skills. The color of the sofa was complimenting the polo and trousers I was wearing. It is a good DP pic. But I didn’t want to put a solo pic. Also, the current DP is really sweet. I really don't think I want to replace it.

I go back to the previous menu. A couple of gifs can be seen in the grid view. She always sends them to tease me. Gifs and stickers are her game. She has a huge collection of it. These stickers don't show up in the image gallery. They are seamlessly present in the chat.

In the beginning, we started chatting casually. Once the ice was broken and we became comfortable with each other, she started sharing stickers in our conversations. Initially, I was surprised to see them. In one of those early conversations, she resorted to using only these stickers to reply to my messages. I was fascinated by it. It seemed she had a sticker for each and every occasion. I dubbed her my sticker queen. To date, she keeps on surprising me with her new stickers. When I asked her she told me that it was a family thing. Her sister was the one who supplies them to her family group. From there she saves them and uses them as and when required. I have started saving all the stickers she sends. I use them only to communicate with her. Maybe I have used them a couple of times in our boy's group. But it is a place where stickers aren’t used.

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It reminds me of something else. We do have a code in which we talk from time to time. It is mostly used during the calls I make when I am at my workplace. Since the network available there is really low and is surrounded by heavy machinery, it becomes difficult to hear her voice clearly over the phone. She would then use this code to dictate out some of the important words to me with which I have to make out the matter being shared. We have become quite comfortable with it. There are certain other code words we use to express what we want to say in a public space. I can't share the code. It is our thing.

I exit the app and return my phone to the table. I pick up her phone. I unlock it and go to her gallery. Here lies the vast majority of our pictures. The latest ones are from our anniversary outing as I said. Before that, there are some pics we clicked when we went to the beach. I can see a couple of her selfies too. She must have clicked them when she felt bored in her department. She did share them with me. Scrolling back more I come across the pictures from the wedding we attended at the beginning of the year. Her cousin got hitched. She wore a beautiful orange saree. I wore a maroon kurta and a mundu. Needless to say, we looked dashing together. There are a lot of pictures from that day. We clicked wherever and whenever we could - in the church premises, at the reception hall, in our homes and her cousins, in the car, outside the car, amidst the decoration of the hall. A couple of selfies clicked on her cousin's phone are included in them. I am the one who clicks them owing to my long hands. They act like a selfie stick when you need one.

I do a fast scroll of the gallery and wait for it to stop. When it comes to a halt, the pictures being shown on the grid make me smile. They are her selfies, her pouting sad selfies. She is so good at them. She had clicked them just to send them to me. I was busy at my workplace when they arrived at my chat. It takes me completely off guard. Seeing her pout and express sadness makes me melt away. It makes me miss her all the more. I don't need these pictures to tell me how much I miss her, but they compound the effect. Sometimes I try to return the favor. I click some of my own pouting pictures and send them across. It doesn’t come close to the effect her pictures have. She really knows how to pull my heart. And as I have told you, she is the animated one among us. That makes her all the more awesome.

I quickly exit the gallery and swipe to the page that shows a summary of the mobile system. I look for the remaining storage capacity. Only 1 GB remains. She was complaining about how her phone was running out of space. I knew it was because of the photos and videos taken in it as well as the media shared through WhatsApp, especially videos. I have her phone with me right now. I can clear the necessary space if I want to, but I let it be. I will certainly not delete any of the photos in it. Without net and google photos for backup, I won’t be able to access them once I delete them. I also need to transfer them to a laptop or a hard disk. A hard disk would be the right option as both our laptops are running low on space.

I put her mobile back on the table and pick up mine. I open up the camera app and switch to video mode. I am going to record a video. A video log of sorts. I don't know how long it will go on, but I want to record one now. I switch to the selfie camera. I see myself on the screen. I look okay. I take the bottle of water and bring it closer to the table. I keep the mobile on the table and use the bottle as a support. This looks better. I take a deep breath and click the record button.

‘Ummmm, hi. This is David. I am a survivor of the phenomenon that occurred today morning in which all the people from Trivandrum city and its vicinity have disappeared. My wife, Anna, who studies in the Oncology Department of Government Medical College is one among them. I have spent the whole day looking for her in all the places I know. She is nowhere to be found. Nor have I come upon any other human soul in this city. I have looked at some of the prominent places in the city where people gather. I have found no one. This is day one.’

I take a pause, but I don't stop the video. I could use some water but the bottle is in use. I will have to go to the kitchen to get some. I don't want to spoil the flow of it.

‘The networks are down from morning itself. I don't have any mode of communication with anyone anywhere except the walkie-talkie I got from the police station. It operates in the VHF bandwidth and has only limited city coverage. I have sent messages from it since morning. I also kept two points as rendezvous points to meet anyone who got the message and was able to make it. No one turned up. I will keep on doing this daily.’

‘As the day was ending the power supply to the city went off. The light that fills this room is because of the inverter we have in our house. Otherwise, it is dark outside. It is a blackout.’

‘It seems the animals and birds have not been affected by the phenomenon. They are going about their usual lives. This might change if things don't go back to being the way it was. Also, the roads are empty except for the vehicles that have crashed. So far I haven't seen any trapped humans in them. The shops are all closed. A couple of them are open on the medical college premises. These are the twenty-four open shops.’

I can't continue one. I am welled up by my emotions.

‘I hope this is my first and last video. I don't want to do this again tomorrow.’

I stop the video. The more I speak of the day the more I am becoming affected by it. What I said at the end is what I truly want. I want to wake up to the normal world. Let this day be an anomaly in the normal scheme of things. I am okay with that. But please, let me wake up to the normal life I have had till now.