The six o’clock alarm is the first one to wake me. I promptly switch it off without any second thought and go back to sleep. The night didn’t go well. The sleep wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. This is what prompted me to switch off the alarm. I just want to lie down in bed and not move. Why did they even make alarms? I would have loved to stay in bed and wake up after I have finished my sleep. The human body should have evolved such that if sound sleep was not achieved then it would not wake up. It should not feel sleepy or lethargic for the day. It isn’t sadly.

Thirteen minutes later the next alarm goes off. I turn it off swiftly. I know there are more alarms to come and I should be switching them off if I want to have some peace. But I am too lethargic to do it. I roll over to the other side of the bed and stretch out my hand.

As I stretch, I receive a sudden jolt of reality. My eyes open up (groggily though, not like the sudden wide-open ones you see in the movies) and it stays open for a while. Reality dawns upon me. I prick my ears to the sound of the birds chirping from the owner's home. Other than that there is no other sound.

I roll to where the small bed table is kept. I take the mobile and unlock it with my fingerprint. The emergency calls-only ribbon runs on top of the screen. There is no network. My eyes dart past the mobile to the walkie-talkie behind it. I keep the mobile back on the table and pick it up. I crank up the volume and cycle through the channels. Small static crackles whenever I switch the channel. There is nothing else. I dab on the push-to-talk button a couple of times. The small static it generates is all I can hear from it. I keep it back where it belonged and pick up my phone. I roll over on the bed and come to a straight position. I pull up the pillow and tuck it under my head. I unlock the phone once again and open my WhatsApp.

By now it is quite clear. It is the continuation of what transpired the previous day. What has happened has happened and this is the reality now. It was not a dream. It never was. Nor am I dying. I am fine. Utterly fine. Physically maybe. Mentally I don’t know. Sleep has had some good effects on it. I am still in a zone in which I am yet to comprehend the situation completely. Whenever this happens, I find myself being depressed and dejected knowing I no longer have my Anna with me. I know the human population in this city and its nearby surroundings have disappeared. I still can't be completely sure of this as I haven't explored the city thoroughly. From whatever I had gone through yesterday, I haven't encountered anyone in the city. The chances look bleak. Without any mode of communication except the police radio, it is very difficult to come in contact with anyone. The city is huge, the chances minuscule. I would have been well off if she was with me. The ordeal would have been much lighter to deal with.

The messages that were sent yesterday remain as it is in WhatsApp. They have not been delivered. There is no sign of it ever being delivered. Networks, servers, and all forms of cloud must have shut down with the power outage. It is almost certain power will not come back. Without humans to monitor and control the vastly complicated systems that go into making power, regulating, and transmitting it to our households, they are bound to shut down and remain shut. The city has already witnessed this. If a city like Trivandrum felt it within 24 hours of the disappearance, the power must have gone out in every possible city and town. Even if you have someone alive in the power plant, he is not enough. As I said earlier, the system is hugely complicated and requires multitudes of people doing their specific jobs to make it run smoothly.

My bladder makes it clear I need to go to the loo and release the pressure. I get up from the bed and go to the washroom. I get my job done in a matter of minutes and come out. The empty bed does seem inviting, but I fight the urge to jump onto it for a while. If I do that, I will be once again cussing the alarm for waking me up from the quick nap I would have snugged in.

I walk out into the hall. Daylight filters in through the curtains on the windows. I go and pull them back. Ahhh! More sunlight. More brightness. It takes away the remaining gloominess from the room. It feels much livelier than it was yesterday night.

On the dining table, I see the other phone. I pick it up and unlock it. It has nothing new to say. I keep it back. I walk towards the wash basin and decide to freshen myself up. I brush my teeth and wash my face. Any remaining sleep needs to be dispelled before I start the day. It is going to be harder on me than it was previously.

As I finish wiping my face, I look at myself in the mirror. I am as I remember myself to be me. People have told me I have lost weight over time. I don't think I have. I have been in the same weight range for the past ten years. I have been able to maintain it successfully. There is no trick or hack I employ to achieve this. I simply eat as much as I want to and say a firm no when I have to. It does get tricky when the food in front of you is something you like. But sometimes you become full and the feeling of having more of your favorite stuff just fades away. I reach that state quite easily most of the time.

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Apart from having grown a beard and keeping it on for most of the time, there hasn’t been any changes from the time I passed out from college. In college, I had grown my hair to a good extent. I tried to do the same thing when I was in my second year of work. It didn’t work out well. The water we were getting to bathe was hard. I began losing more hair as it grew. It was not strong. Because of this, I decided to chop it off after a couple of months. My hair loss did come down but the process was initiated. There was no way of undoing it. Since then I do have hair loss. But I think I grow back almost the same amount of hair. Thus there isn’t much visible difference in my head, although there are some places where if you look closely you will find a lack of thick hair.

I know I will get the greys at some point in time. My parents have grey hair. From the time I know him, my Grandfather has had white hair. There isn’t a hint of black in them. He is completely ok with it. I think he doesn’t care much about it. Honestly, it suits him. I have seen his photographs from his youth. He had thick black hair back then. He looked really handsome in it. Now in his eighties, his white hair compliments him perfectly. They are really soft and silky. I like to rub my hand over it from time to time whenever I am with him.

I have greys towards the front end of my head. Sometimes they seem prominent. Sometimes they don't. When my hair grows beyond a certain level, these greys somehow hide among the blacks. People have come to me and said my hair has become grey all of a sudden. I try to explain to them what was happening. But I don't think they get it. Anyways I don't care much about what they think about my hair and its color. I just want my hair to be there as much as possible for as long as possible. Any kind of hair is better than having no hair.

There are some dark circles under my eyes. I think it is because of the lack of sleep for the last two nights. I have noticed these dark circles remain under control if I get a good night's sleep. No matter how much I try to compensate for it by sleeping in the daytime, it doesn’t work. I wish it did.

I smile. Initially, it comes out naturally. I see it in the mirror and it feels good. It quickly turns into a forced one and soon dies away. Why was I smiling? Was there something funny to smile about? Or did something good happen?

They are here. The feelings of loss and anguish, depression and anger, helplessness and weakness, they are all here. I can see them in the mirror staring right back at me. I need to accept reality and take it for what it is. Only then will I be able to go forward with my life. In such a situation what is the point of going forward if there is no destination in mind? Is it worth the journey? If not, wouldn’t it be better to end it now? Wouldn’t it bring much-needed blissful peace once and forever?

I have always been confident about myself and my good mental state. I believed it was good and will not have any problems in the near future with how things were going. I will be rational and will not do anything foolish whatsoever. This is the one life I currently know about. This is it. It would be great if I can live it to the best of my capabilities and see it through. I will not be the force that stops it midway. It will unfold the way it has to.

Yet I find myself harboring those very thoughts in my head even for a fleeting second. What has happened to the confidence I have in myself about being in a good mental state? Have I been pushed to walk down the darkest of all paths yesterday? Am I still walking in it? Is there no return from this?

This thing we think about ourselves, this feeling of being in control of our lives, of having figured it all out is very wrong. I thought I had reins over my mind. I am wrong. I have got a glimpse of how fragile and delicate it is. It has taken a blow from the events of the past twenty-four hours from which it will take quite some time to recuperate. In that time frame, it is very easy to take the escape route - to end it all. I think I will be taunted to consider it from time to time whenever memories and thoughts resurface. I will be harassed and pushed to my limits. My mind will go for a toss.

All I can say now is I need to take this one moment at a time. These feelings will come. They will stay for a while. I just need to not feed them anything else. Their hunger is insatiable. They get hungrier the more I provide them. And scarier too. I need to be able to put up a stoic face in front of them and confront them for what they are - misfortune on the grandest scale ever.

There is only one question I keep pondering upon. Why me? Why was I chosen for this experience? What is it in me that makes me worthy of having to go through this experience and come out the better of it? Or is it that there is no coming out of this? Is it an experiment of sorts in which I was drawn out randomly from billions of other human beings to live this experience and see how I respond to it? In life, there is no fixed path. And all paths are just paths. No one is the best or the worst. There is no absolute one. All are relative to each other. In the infinite paths that stretch across the multiverse, this one singular experience is one among many.

I was one among many. Now I am all alone. The only one of my species left.