I drive away from the supermarket. As soon as I exit into the road, I am suddenly bombarded by a vision. I see myself hoarding a lot of foodstuffs. They go stale within a few days. Now I don’t have an idea of how I am going to dispose of them. As I sit and think about it, the stale food has started rotting. Maggots have started eating them. Soon they will be finished with it, after which they will move on to me.

I don't know why this thing flashed in my head. Is it some kind of warning? I know if I have to store perishable stuff, I need to ensure that I have the proper means to store them. Otherwise, they would only turn out to be a pain in the ass when they start rotting away. Everything around me is eventually going to rot away. If I can store some of them, I might be able to enjoy them from time to time.

I am almost approaching Pongumoodu junction. There is a petrol pump on my left. I slow down at its entrance. The backup generator is not working. There is no sound from it. Did it kick in when the power went out? Did it run and die when its fuel reserves ran away? I need to physically check it to get any data from it. I think of doing it now or later. The vision I had somehow made me want to just get back home at the earliest. I decide to do that. I look at the fuel gauge in the scooter. It is almost full. I have enough fuel for nearly a hundred kilometers. I resume my ride.

I reach Pongumoodu junction and take the right turn. I take the turn very slowly. I look at the surroundings, to see if anything is out of the blue or if anything has changed from yesterday's sight.

Nothing has changed. It remains as it is. I feel dejected. I am used to it now. The hope of finding something out of the ordinary will always spark up in moments like these. It is not going anywhere. I think it will always live inside me, kindling the flame of finding something that would help me make sense of the situation I am in. Maybe it might be a coded message. Maybe it might be the presence of another person. I am happy to have anything. I am happy to witness anything that would be incongruent with the present.

I find the emptiness of the road and its surroundings to be hard-hitting. This is almost similar to the time I come back home after dropping her off. There is always some kind of activity going on here. On weekdays, the road would be crowded. There would be traffic on the road. A traffic policeman would be moderating it. On Saturdays, it is a lot more relaxed concerning traffic. The commotion in the shops or on the sidewalks remains. All of these tones are down only on a Sunday. It is a day when everyone is at home enjoying their weekly holiday. The traffic would be minimal. Most of the shops would be closed. Some would be open till the afternoon. Some are open in the evening.

No matter which day it is, it is never this deserted. I mean I haven't seen it in any other state. Even during the peak of the covid second wave, there used to be some kind of activity. A shop would be open. A car might pass by. Maybe a bike. The medical shop will be open for a while. So will be the grocery shop. On Sundays, they would all be shut. The total curfew would be imposed on Sundays. She never had a Sunday duty on any of those total shutdown Sundays. Maybe then it would have been quite similar to what I am witnessing.

Still, you were not alone. You knew your neighbors were also stuck at home just like you. You could spot them on their balcony soaking up the sun, coming out onto the terrace to hang the clothes out to dry, sitting on the porch and reading the newspaper, talking on their phones with their loved ones, etc, etc. You might even hear them celebrating the holiday with loud music.

Our caretaker used to do that. He would play out loud some of the trending Bollywood songs. Sometimes he sang to it. Sometimes she would hum to the songs she liked. I love it. I love hearing her hum to popular songs. She hums them beautifully. She is in tune while she does that. I like humming. I do it but I can never remain in tune.

Thinking of her makes me miss her a lot. This gets to me. This specific feeling concerning her will always gets to me. Her presence would have helped me a lot. She would have pacified me. She would be in shock too, having lost all her family, friends, and colleagues. But she would have remained calm. She would have composed herself and taken a much better effort than I am taking now to try to figure it out. That is how she is. She is very mature. I leave some of the decisions to her because of this. I feel I have a good amount of maturity and can take the decision myself. But when I have her, I would always love to consult her and get her opinion about it. She has consistently proven that her decisions are better and more practical. She has a natural knack for it.

Thinking of her makes me miss her being my pillion. She would hug me and hold me tight. If she is feeling a bit down she would rest her head gently on my back and stay there for a while. I avoid sharp turns and potholes on the road. I let her be there on my back. I love that feeling. She says doing so makes her feel loved and warm. I reply that I am not doing anything. She says that is all she wants, to lie down on my back. It naturally brings a warm wide smile to my face. She can't see it. It stays for a while as I navigate the road and the traffic and bring her home.

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The ride through the lane is a quiet one. I drive at a slow pace in order to get a look at the surroundings. As far as I can make it out, nothing has changed from yesterday. I can't remember how exactly it was but I am pretty sure to have caught any changes in it.

I reach the shop from where we used to buy our milk. It is still closed. A dog is lying in front of it. It is sleeping peacefully basking in the sun. I think it was one of the stray dogs I met yesterday night. I have no intention of disturbing its sleep and so, I continue on my way.

I reach the small entrance to our by-lane. I enter and take my hand off the throttle. The scooter eases down the path. When I reach the entrance to our apartment, I rev it up for a while and slide on comfortably to its parking spot.

The place is as I left it. There is a cat on the boundary wall. It jumped up from its sitting position and ran away on seeing me approach. I kill the engine to silence. A wind blows in and extinguishes that silence. The trees dance to it. The wind stays for a while. I stay in the scooter and hear the leaves flutter, hear them break the silence, and send a feeling of being alive and in motion. A coconut tree in the adjacent property sways to it much more than any other tree in the vicinity. The wind slowly fades away. The trees come to a standstill. A couple of leaves fall off from the huge mango tree on the same property. They swirl and fall with grace. With that, the show has come to an end. Silence is back. I get out of the scooter and walk to the entrance of the building. The flight of stairs awaits me.

I don't have as much energy as I had when I left home in the morning. I was feeling a bit low but I did have some energy in me. The energy was being channeled in by the hope of going out and finding something out. I have returned with nothing at all. I did visit another police station to find it in the same state as the ones I had visited yesterday. Everything remains as it was yesterday. The simple hard fact is that it is going to remain as such for the foreseeable future. I must accept it and get on with what I have to do.

The task remains very much like an impossible one. I still have no idea if I am taking the right decisions. I don't know if my approach is the right one. I have no one to ask or refer to. It is this feeling of being trapped in an insurmountable position that drains me out. It makes me feel like a loser. I know I haven't even tried anything before and I am declaring myself to be a loser. It is not right. But my circumstances are as such.

I reach my apartment and open the door. The curtains aren’t open. It casts a forlorn ambiance in the room. I close the door and open the curtains one by one. Light floods in. It looks much better now.

I grab myself the half bottle of water lying on the table and finish it off. I guess I was thirsty. I feel a bit hungry. I can hear my stomach rumbling. It is asking to be fed. I think I am in the mood to grab a bite. I go to the kitchen, open the cabinet on the top and take out the biscuit container. I open it up and take out the packet of dark fantasy biscuits from it. I like it very much. It has this chocolate-filled center which is really yummy. She had bought the packet. She knows I love it and makes it a point to keep it topped up in the pantry. I take out a single biscuit from the pack and indulge in it. The biscuit feels even more delicious today.

As the chocolatey liquid hits my tongue and its taste floods my senses, I am lost in its ecstasy for a while. I close my eye to indulge in the luscious taste. Only chocolate can do something like this. No other flavor can even come close to it.

Chocolate reminds me of her. I associate chocolate with her. But she isn’t a fan of this biscuit. She might have one if I am having one. I think she isn’t a fan of biscuits. Oh wait, she likes milk-bikis. She likes to dip them in a cup of a hot tea or coffee and eat them. That is the only way I like to eat them. I can't have them as such.

All this makes me feel moody. I want to make some tea, take out the biscuits, and sit and eat them with her. I really miss her. I miss her warmth and comfort and the conversations we share. Sometimes we might not have anything to say. We sit and eat and drink our hot beverage in silence. It is a different feeling in itself. Even though we are not uttering words, we are communicating. There is a silent conversation going on between our minds. A kind of telepathic conversation. I feel it is needed at times.

Silence can teach you to appreciate the noise. I felt it very much during these two days. I have truly come to appreciate the sounds that I had taken for granted. In their absence, I feel a void. That is why I stood still and listened to the trees dance to the tunes of the wind on parking the scooter. It is something I witness every day and yet I failed to understand its importance in the context of everyday life.

Every little thing has a role to play in this universe. Everything has its own purpose. A beautiful purpose. Maybe we should all take time to enjoy them. Beauty is to be enjoyed by everyone. Why deny ourselves the pleasure of it?

Someone has rightly said a thing of beauty is a joy forever. We know this but we tend to ignore it in our fast-paced lives. My life has slowed down to a snail's pace. Is that the lesson I need to learn? To slow down, take a deep breath, and enjoy the little things? I will have to live it out and see.