I don't know when sleep finally came to me. This time I was thinking about how my life has become our life after her arrival. From being singular, its become plural. I am getting the hang of it in my own time. The journey is beautiful. I am learning a lot of things daily. I am just so happy and grateful to have her in my life.

I know I did fall asleep because the moment I got up I checked the time. It is three thirty-three in the morning. I don't know what woke me up at this hour. I was facing the wall when I woke up. After looking at the time, I turn and face the windows. They are in a muted state as compared to the other nights. I don't feel like peeing too. My bladder is fine. I wonder why I woke up. I stretch out my hand and take my mobile from the desk. I press the lock button. The screen lights up. Running on the topmost portion of the screen is the strip with the message ‘emergency calls only’. For a moment I feel all sunk, like at the bottom of the sea. I feel this heavy load of expectations that haven't been met coming down on me. I keep back the mobile on the desk and stare out into the window.

I think it is time for me to accept the fact that things are not going to change. I need to tell myself that whatever has happened is real - people have vanished from the city and its vicinity and probably from the whole planet. And I am the only one left.

The tiniest hope that I have been harboring inside me of things getting back to normal after a good night's sleep should be discarded. There was actually no place for such a kind of hope in the first place. Still, I hope against everything. I hoped it was just a bad nightmare. A nightmare that stretched for twenty-four hours and dissolved once the time was over. A nightmare that was crafted to make me realize the importance of my wife and many other things that I usually take for granted in life. A nightmare to test my patience and my reactions. A nightmare designed to shake me from my core and see how I respond to it.

It surely has shown me a lot and made me see through a different perspective about myself. She always makes it a point to bring out the best in me. She pushes me towards it. I think I really wanted that. It is one of the ways in which I operate. I need someone out there that pushes me. Only then will I ever take the necessary kind of action required to implement it. She is the one that is pushing me to figure out what I want with my life. She might not be doing it actively, but passively she surely is questioning me about it. I know this. I feel this. And I have to answer it.

What do I want from life? I want a simple and humble life. I want it to be peaceful in all senses. I want to have a family with my wife that is humble and peaceful. I want to have a minimum financial independence so that I am not dependent on anyone. But most importantly there should be a purpose to live. I think this can be achieved with the kind of work one is doing. In my case, I want to be a writer. I want to write stories. I have a lot of ideas in my head but none of them have come down on paper. I want to be in a state in which I can churn them out and see how it blooms. For that, I need to have a minimum of mental peace concerning my finances. Money should not be given much importance is what everyone says. I agree with that. But then it should be given the importance it deserves. No more than that. Because money is money and it has become an integral part of our lives.

All of this is now entwined with Anna. She too is a part of my life now. It is our life as I have said a hundred times. Whatever decisions we take should be in coherence with each other. Sometimes one of us has to make way for the other. It is all a part of being in a relationship. You give and take with respect and wholeheartedness. Without that, I don't think any relationship can go forward. The small compromises you make wholeheartedly on a daily basis are the cement that strengthens your relationship. She makes a lot for me. I do too. We both give and take, for which we are grateful to each other.

This is what is being said everywhere. Take up any relationship advice book or person and you will find the basic things that are being talked this. I always feel after getting into a relationship we forget the basic stuff and go on to manage the more complex things. Actually, there aren’t any complex things. It is all our making. We make a thing more complex by not addressing it in the simplest of all manners.

Life is meant to be simple. It is simple. We should really stop making it complex. A simple problem will always have a simple solution. Use that. Don't try to figure out a complex solution to it. Figuring that out is bound to make the problem complex itself and thus, you now need to find out another complex answer to it, thereby complicating the whole procedure. Just like this sentence.

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Think and act simple. That is all that I want to say. When this fails then try taking it to the next level.

I wonder what would have happened if such a situation had occurred to someone three decades back. Like my father. What would he have done? How would he have reacted? Would he be in the same mental state I am in now? Or would he be experiencing something totally different?

I think he would have been much better composed than I am. He would have understood the situation much earlier and prepared himself for the future. I know he would be grieving about losing my mother. But he would have concluded that there isn’t anything he can do. Whatever has happened has happened and he has no say in it. He can either take it for what it is and move ahead or sit and sulk. Maybe he might have sat and sulked for a while and then decided to move forward.

Why can't I do that? Why can't I still let go of the fact that what has happened has happened? She is gone. Disappeared. Along with all the people in the city, maybe even further away. I am all that is left of my species in this city. There can be others too. But she is not among them. I have lost her in the strangest of all circumstances. I feel she was snatched away from me forcefully, taken away without my consent. I can't even blame death for this because if I do then it would imply she is dead. That is something I outrightly discard away. She is not dead. She is somewhere else, maybe in some other dimension, alive and well. She is definitely not dead. Just disappeared from this reality. She can't be dead. There is no evidence for it. I won't believe that.

I want the day to end. I want the day to end and a new beginning to happen. Deep down within myself I do feel I would be happy with a new world that is anything other than how it was today. I have had enough of it. But then the new day can be anything. It can be even shittier than what I experienced. I will be even more depressed if it turns out to be worse.

Is there anything worse than this? Yes, there is. What if I wake up to a situation in which there is no one and I find myself paralyzed below my chest or waist? I will be confined to the bed and undergo a very depressing state.

Or I might wake up to find everyone dead. As I go exploring my surroundings, I will be witnessing dead bodies all around me. When I reach her department I will find her lifeless there. That is not something I am ready for. I think I will never be ready for this in the coming near future. We have a whole life ahead of us. Nobody can take her away from me. I will be in shock, not knowing what to do. I will cry out loud, cry out my heart and soul for her. There won't be anyone to hear my cries. No one will come to console me. They are all dead. The dead will make their presence felt soon. They will start to rot away. A whole city of rotting humans, maybe even the whole world. My family and friends would have succumbed to the same fate. I don't think I will go and see them. I can't handle that.

Considering these horrendous situations I am in a better place. Should I be thankful for it or not, I don't know. I really don't understand why this had to happen in the first place. There is no logical explanation for it. Why did everyone just vanish away into thin air? How? And when? What the hell is happening? And why have I been left alone? Why? Questions are all that I have.

I will fall asleep soon. Sleep is coming back to me, I can feel it. Few more hours to get that good sleep before my alarms start going off one by one. They are kept at the same time as yesterday. I hug the pillow beside me and turn myself to face the wall. I close my eyes shut in an attempt to forcefully bring sleep to me.

It doesn’t work. I have been at it for a minute now but to no avail. I push away the pillow and turn back to face the window. The openness invites me. I get up from the bed and sit for a while on it facing the window. I can see the silhouette of the landscape in the darkness outside it. For a microsecond, I feel a bit of peace in the unspoken beauty of what I see. I get up and stand next to the window, hold on to the grill and look out into the open night.

The couple of lights I had seen from down below are to be seen shining forth their light in the otherwise pitch-black night. The absence of the moon makes it even darker.

Once when I was in the mountains, I experienced a night like this. We were out away in the wilderness. The nearest house was half a kilometer away while the nearest village was a solid three kilometers away. It was a new moon night. The stars were the only source of light we had. But they were not sufficient enough. Initially, when we sat in the darkness and caught up on each other, the darkness did seem eerie and scary. It forced us to make a small fire. Only then did we feel a little bit safe and secure.

I have been having flashbacks of these experiences I have had in my life for the entire day. They somehow seem to come to me whenever something similar is being witnessed. Is this also a part of what is happening? Am I being made to go through all these experiences once again deliberately? For what purpose? They say your life flashes back in front of you when you are about to die. Am I dying? Is this how it is - a very realistic dream of sorts? Is this the last time I find myself experiencing something? Will I wake up tomorrow morning? I don't know. All I know is that I am feeling sleepy. I move away from the window and hit the bed.