I can't sum up the day in a choice few words. I really can't do that. I want to but I can't. This has to be the strangest day I have ever had in my life. There is nothing else that can beat this as it is something out of the syllabus for the subject called human life. Something so distant from it that this test is the most difficult one ever. Honestly, I don't want anyone else to go through this. It is not nice. I know it can make or break people. Maybe someone might do better than what I am doing. But still, this is a test I wouldn’t let anyone else take. But then I can only say. It is ultimately their choice.

It is time to call it a day and see what is in store for me tomorrow. I have been assuring myself throughout the day that this is a very bad dream I am living through. It will finish when I go to bed tonight. I am looking forward to going to bed and falling asleep. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night during the process of finishing the dream and stop it midway or tamper its flow and stop it from restoring my ordinary life. I am a sound sleeper but still, I have this fear in me cause I know I can be a bit anxious and not get a proper sleep when things are going in my head.

I don't sleep properly when I am in a new bed or a new place until I am dead tired and absolutely need to fall asleep. My sleep would always be not good. I would be waking up at odd hours and fiddling with myself. I would be going back to sleep immediately. Taking it cumulatively, it is never going to be a good sleep.

Whenever I am traveling overnight to a new place, my sleep won’t be deep. I would always be on the lookout and alert to not miss my destination, especially when it is along the way. If it is the final destination there is a huge relief and peace of mind. I can sleep much better. Otherwise, I would be waking up from time to time and checking where I have reached on Google maps and the time. There have been a couple of instances where I have overslept and missed my de-boarding station. I guess those experiences are the ones contributing to this subconscious behavior.

Another issue is having not removed the plastic cover in which the mattress comes wrapped. In some places, they put bedsheets on top of it and leave the plastic cover intact. When I am on the bed and start moving around, the plastic crumbles with my movement and makes these very irritating noises. I hate them. I would want to rip apart the plastic cover and throw them away. But I can't. So I try going back to sleep knowing my sleep won’t be deep enough.

In my workplace, I have my bunk to sleep in. It has been there for me from the time I have been there. We remain in a worksite for quite a long time. When we do move from one project to the other, we also take our most essential bunks with us. These include our living bunks as well as a couple of offices and a tool room. The rest of them are supplied according to the scope of the project.

I climb the stairs and reach the landing of my apartment. Instead of proceeding to the door, I continue with the flight of stairs. I find myself standing on the landing leading to the terrace. I open the door and enter the terrace right above our apartment. I come here to hang our washed clothes. If I hang them up in the morning I get them all dried and warm by the afternoon. During the monsoons, I don't put our clothes here. We hang them up in our rooms using all the hangers we have. They take a longer way to dry but at least they don't get wet if a sudden downpour happens. I put them out on some days. Those days would pass by with me paying close attention to the sound of rain. Sometimes I catch its sound and rush out to pick them up before they get drenched. Sometimes I miss it. Now I have made it a point to go and collect them in the afternoon itself and not let them stay on the terrace till the evening.

The terrace is empty except for some coconuts lying in one corner. They have been here for quite some time. I duck beneath the clothesline and walk toward the other end. I am now above our balcony area. From here I have a better view than our balcony.

There aren’t any lights in the distance. We are not living in the heart of the city. Yet this is an integral part of it, the part that developed due to the medical college. I can see one of the blocks of the medical college from up here. It is a big greenish building. I can't make out the color in the darkness. But I know it. It must be the multi-specialty building. It normally has lights strewn across its multiple floors. Today it is dark. So are all the other buildings in its vicinity along with every house and street that I can lay my eyes on from up here. There are very few lights to be seen, the ones that I probably saw from down below. The ones that are on inverter power will soon run out. The solar-powered ones will last for some more time. Maybe they might last for a long time, given their battery load and charging capabilities.

I need to get my hands on some solar-powered stuff. I make a mental note to myself. I had met someone who had a solar-powered power bank with him. He had brought it from the US the previous year. He was telling us how it had been a lifesaver for him and his friends when they were stuck on a forest trail on their outing just before returning home. The one who had the trail loaded in his phone developed some battery issues and was discharging faster than ever. They were then dependent on their power banks which ran out on the first day itself. It was the solar-powered one that got them going throughout the whole trip.

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Up here on the terrace, a cool breeze blows by. It is January. There is a chillness in the air. I wonder if it will become slightly colder than the previous days. I take up this thought because as far as the day was concerned there was no human activity in any form. The roads were empty except for my scooter. The buildings are all empty and the power consumption was the least to date until the power went out. Pollution was drastically low today, even lower than the time when everything was shut during the first lockdown. Pollution from vehicles is a major contributor to the rising heat in the cities. We have gotten so used to it that we forget it. I have heard some climate change activists saying out loud, that we have become so used to the things around us that we forget to see how they are contributing in a negative way to the society and the planet.

Haven’t we always been like this? We have always taken the good and shrugged off the bad. We have become so used to the convenience created we forget to look at what expense it is being created. Consider plastics. We created them. They brought a revolution in the day-to-day life of a human beings. Since then they have grown and become an integral part of our lives. They have made our lives much easier than it ever was.

But in the process, it has started to become a mounting burden to us when it comes to its disposal. They are not degradable. They will remain as it is even after our species passes away. They pose a threat to the entire earth, affecting ecosystems and creatures that live in it. We still haven’t found a cure for this problem. Also, the accumulated plastic waste has reached epic proportions. They are beyond our current capabilities to reuse or recycle.

I have always felt whenever we pursue something new and novel, we should also take into account the problems or side effects it might have over time. Some of them are truly essential but might have some side effects that need to be addressed. One should go about manufacturing this kind of product only after making sure that the side effect has been taken care of. Maybe it might result in a premium being extracted from the user. It might not adhere to the cost-effectiveness that was what had made the product feasible for manufacturing on a massive scale. But we need to do this because of the impact it will have later on. We forget this in our pursuit of cost-effectiveness and utility. We are solving a problem now and creating another problem for future generations. It is the wrong thing to do in my opinion.

We haven’t had any problems from our previous generations. In fact, they didn’t burden us with any long-term problems affecting ourselves and our planet. But we as a generation seem to be doing that. I really can’t understand if we are deliberately ignoring it or do we genuinely believe we aren’t doing any harm at all.

I have felt the changes the climate has undergone for the past two decades. At the start of the twenty-first century, the climate was very predictable. The seasons were in order and very much as expected. Here in Kerala, the monsoons would arrive towards the mid of May. Our schools would be closed for summer vacations. By the time it was time to reopen and enter the higher class, we would be going to school in raincoats or umbrellas. The entry to our new classes would always be a wet one. During our college days, we used to enjoy the rain by playing football in it. The rains were fun. Even though they made our days mushy and moody, we enjoyed them. We enjoyed the whole feeling of it.

Now the monsoons have lost track of time. When they arrive they come in such fury they have caused a couple of floods in the state in recent years. Or they would show promise but fail to deliver. Either way, they are not consistent. Also, I don't enjoy them the way I used to. I don't know why but it doesn’t excite me as much as it used to. I love them and the rains would always entice me. But I think I missed being jubilant about it as I grew up. Maybe it is my work nature. Being out in the field, we really hate the rain. They are a big turn-off to our job. We dread them. They spoil our moods and turn our site into a mucky place. Maybe it is this that has caused me to not like them. I know I do enjoy them when I am at home. In my hometown, I sit with my parents and drink a hot cup of tea or coffee. Even here last year, we used to make ourselves a hot cup of filter coffee and savor the rain from the balcony or from our beds with the windows open and letting in the cool breeze that sometimes accompanies these rains.

I look around the darkness that shrouds me one more time. It is black and lonely. I find myself all alone in this city. Suddenly the city feels huge. It can easily engulf me. I might want to be engulfed. Has the city done just that to every human that inhibited it and called it their city? If so, why did it leave me alone? Why couldn’t it include me? Surely I am of no consequence to it. Neither is there any specialty in me. I am a normal human being. That is all I am and want to be.

I hope the city hears me. I hope it hears my pleas and cries and decides to dissolve this situation and restore it to how things were yesterday. The city must be missing all of the cacophony and camaraderie that was brought in by our species.

I decide to go back to my home and call it a day. That is what remains, to call it a day, sleep off with the firm belief of waking up to the normal world.