Whenever we went out for second shows or dinners followed by a night drive or a small quick visit to the beach, we would have phoned the caretaker to leave the gate unlocked. Sometimes he does it, sometimes he doesn’t. He would latch it from the bottom. This is a problem. I would have to jump the gate and unlock it. She would urge me to call him and ask him to come and open it. I don’t like to do that. He would be sleeping and I don't want to disturb him. I wouldn’t be doing a crime by waking him up because I had already told him about this. Maybe he forgot or didn’t pay attention when he was locking the gate. I feel it is not nice to wake someone up unnecessarily.

Tonight it kind of feels like that situation, even though there are differences. This can be attributed to the fact that the lights are not on in the vicinity. Normally the few lamps that light the entrance to our apartment stay lit till the time the caretaker closes the gate. They are all off today. There is a small street lamp a few meters away from the entrance to our apartment. It is also off. The house that borders the wall mostly always has lights till midnight. They even leave their kitchen door open from time to time, flooding the surroundings with the light from the tube light inside. Some lights will be up on the owner's house, even though it lies below the level where our apartment complex starts. In short, there was always some sort of a light coming in from here and there. There might have been very few occasions when I would have come across a situation other than this.

Once when we were returning from our hometown, we started late at night to avoid the traffic on the road. We reached at one past midnight. The gate wasn’t locked but the lights were out. The street light was also out. It was really dark that night. On reaching home and settling in, we realized the power was out. The absence of the street light should have made it obvious. It was when we tried to charge our phones we realized the lack of electricity.

I have walked half the distance to the entrance to our apartment block. Here to my right is the house I was talking about, the one where the kitchen door stays open most of the time. On my left is where I parked my car. If I look into the distance in the same direction I can see the topography of the land as it climbs. The area has been populated by houses. All these homes would have had some kind of light emanating from them. It can be a small porch light, or a powerful lamp lighting the garden and the surroundings. Some rooms would be lit and so would be some floors. Today as I look out into the distance I see very few lights. I see one here and another there. And another small one twinkling away among the trees. Then there is another one quite far away. That’s it. Four lights. I counted them. That's all there is tonight. They should be powered by inverters. Soon they will run out. But I am thankful to have them today. I should thank their owners. No one gives an emergency power supply from their inverters to their outdoor lighting. It is a waste. The same power can be used inside. Yet, these homes do have them. It sounds very weird but still, it has proved to be of use to me. It surely is comforting me in these dark times. Maybe they are not outdoor lights. Maybe they are some kind of indoor lights. I don't know. And I really don't care. They are here for me tonight and that is all that matters to me.

The current situation is making me undergo a kind of a walk down memory lane but in a very different sense. I say this because I am not sure if I would have ever recollected all these memories, feelings, thoughts, and actions I have had or done in my past. They are mostly trivial ones. If I had to remember anything from my past I would have always taken time to first think of something that was interesting. I would never have thought of thinking of something that was brooding or something that didn’t have much importance. A reason for it could be that I am thinking solely from the perspective of presenting it to someone else. This is a perspective that wants you to be at your best and put your finest up so that the judgment you receive is welcoming and good. Well, this judgment actually doesn’t matter at all. It is something you create to satisfy your need to be validated or approved. Because of this, you have worked out everything leading to a favorable result.

In its truest sense, you must be able to think of something or the other without much thought and present it the way it is. This is seldom done. Again the reason for it being it might not be presentable and you want it to be. So you add in elements that actually distort the rawness of it. You are bending it and reinventing it to suit someone else's need - even though if there is such a person they have never demanded of this need, it is all your creation - and thereby in a way corrupting what was solely yours.

How many of us can recollect memories that are raw to the core? Do we even have such memories with us? We have. The kind that I am experiencing now. The ones that have never been touched because they didn’t have any taste to them to be presented and get approval. They are the only raw ones remaining. Everything else has been tampered with and changed. Especially the ones that keep on going the rounds in parties or gatherings. They have been skillfully changed and evolved over the different circumstances in which they have been presented. Yes, a memory is made to put different makeup - one on top of the other - according to the situation.

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I want to preserve this day, the memory of this day as it is. I don't want to tamper with it under any circumstances. I want to remain staunch and bold and take the firm stand of not changing the teeniest bit of it if I ever have to present it to someone. I want them to feel what I have felt today, in its truest form. I don't want their judgment or their remark. I need to be doing it because I want to do it, not for anybody’s sake. This memory is mine and I want it to be as raw as possible. Somewhere down the line I also hope I won't have to share it with anyone else. I know myself and somewhere down the line, I would want to alter some facts here and there. No matter how much I try I don't think I can ever present something in its truest form to someone. Because I am concerned about their judgment.

I say I don't care about it or it doesn’t matter to me and all that. But honestly, it does. It has always done and has been a part of my life forever. It is something I surely cannot change in a short span of time. I really don't know if it could change over a longer time period. It is for this one reason that I want my memory to remain with me and no one else. No one will remember my memory or what I said after I left. Except for my Anna. But yeah. No one else will. For them, it will always be a story I narrated. Most stories have a short lifetime. Some do stay for a while. But they get eventually pushed to the fringes of the memory. If they have to recollect it on some occasion, there is a high chance that it would be different from what they had heard. Very much like the game Chinese whisper.

I reach the entrance to the building and see the flight of stairs. There is a camera pointing straight at me from a wall and there is another one perched under the ceiling at the entrance. The familiar faint red light that glows like a ring outside the lens is absent in the camera in front of me. I turn back and look at the other one. It is blankly staring at me. I am not being captured today. I am not being recorded right now. If I am correct there should be footage for the past two or three days as a backup. The CCTVs are routed right next to the console near the entrance. The receiver is a small DVD player-like thing. It sits somewhere inside one of the cupboards here. I open them one at a time and find them lying on the bottommost one. It is dead, which was expected. I wonder why the house owner never gave any backup supply to the CCTV system. That is very strange. From how much I have talked to him, he is smart. I remember him telling me how the locality had been a hotspot for thieves once.

I remember one of the stories he had told me. I remember it because the story happens during the FIFA World Cup. I forgot the year though. I think it must have been 2014. Our house owner was sitting in his house and watching the football match late at night, somewhere around two in the morning. Oh wait, then it must be the year 2010 cause the 2014 World Cup was held in Brazil and the timings were really awkward. 2010 was held in Germany. Yes. 2010. He was watching a game all by himself when he heard some sirens outside. It faded away soon enough, but he saw the distinct red and blue light flashing outside through his curtained window. He got out of his room and went over to the balcony to see what was happening. He saw a police jeep passing through the lane. It went ahead and stopped a few meters away at the turn of the street. He looked at the nearby houses to see if anyone had woken up upon hearing the sirens. So far no one was awake. Since the police had shut the siren and the lights, he felt it was not that serious of a matter (like murder or so) and maybe a routine check. He waited for a while to see what was going on. Since the jeeps were parked at the turning he couldn’t make out much. He waited for a while and went back inside. He decided to go to bed as the match was over by then.

The next morning when he woke up he was given the news his wife had caught in the morning. A set of robbers had robbed four houses in the vicinity at the same time yesterday night. Three of the houses didn’t have anyone staying in them while the fourth one had an elderly couple and their daughter living with them. The couple was gagged and bound by the robber while their daughter somehow managed to escape his clutches and lock herself up in her room and call the police. The thief managed to escape with some of the valuables he had taken by then. The remaining incidents were only known in the morning when the neighbors noticed a door open or a window broken and mangled. He got the reason for the arrival of the police. Ten minutes later he heard multiple sirens getting louder. It was going to be a busy morning. The news did make it to the next day's newspaper. The robbers were never caught. From that day onwards people became alert and safe when it came to the protection of their houses and valuables. CCTVs were being installed in some of the houses as the weeks passed by. After this incident, there wasn’t any robbery. But everyone was alert. All knew the locality did have families that were well off and could be a hot spot for robbers in the future.

If there was power in it I would have liked to go back and see any clip having my Anna in it. I can't though. Instead, I take my mobile and open my gallery. There is the photo I had clicked of her when we had gone out for our anniversary dinner. I click on it. The picture engulfs my screen. She looks at me with a coy smile. I smile back at her. I stay in this state for some time. Once again I clench my teeth to stop my emotions from getting the better of me.