I approach Pattom junction without coming across anything out of the ordinary. It is strange to have this junction free of traffic at this time of the day. Only during harthal days would such a thing occur. Even Sundays will have a bit of traffic here. I have to take the left turn at the signal. But I stop at the edge of the divider - to have a look around before I divert from the route I took yesterday.

The place is quiet and empty. It is as it was. I know this place well. Any change would have come to my notice. It is a hot day. I can feel the heat. Suddenly the heat disappears. I look up at the sky. A cloud has come and covered the sun. It feels nice, the sudden arrival of a shade and the subsequent decrease in the heat. Before the sun is restored, I start my scooter and take the left turn.

The road is downhill for a while. The moment I enter the downhill section, I pull the brakes and bring the scooter to a halt. It switches off automatically because of the problem. I let it roll in neutral, controlling it with the brakes.

The roads in Trivandrum are good. Although from time to time you will come across a well-paved road being torn apart so as to work on an underground pipeline passing below it. It has made me wonder why there isn’t a proper system for it. I have seen a newly tarred road being torn apart. I felt bad. I really wanted to know if there wasn’t any other way to plan for the pipeline or even the road. Since I know no one in the concerned departments I let it go. But I really want to know about it. It feels as if the whole thing was planned. I know this is not the case. A newly tarred road wouldn’t be subjected to such bad treatment head-on. But still.

I have heard in foreign countries first the road is built. Then comes the electricity and waterworks. Only after all of this has been sorted properly does the construction of the building take place. This results in a well-planned overlay. Also, they give huge importance to how these systems interact with their surroundings. There are proper systems in place to take care of every need. They make sure it functions smoothly. They are also built with a vision to last for as long as possible.

Here in our country first the building is built. Then the electricity and water supply is given. This results in a lot of problems. In my hometown, the electric lines are all overhead lines. They are strung between posts and traverse the length and breadth of the vicinity. Our area has a lot of rubber plantations. During monsoons, when heavy rains and wind lash, some of the branches of these trees fall on these power lines, thereby affecting the power supply in the premises for hours. Earlier it used to be for more than a day. Now the situation has improved drastically. It is good. I feel the system can be made better.

I reach a part of the road I have seen being torn apart for pipeline works. I was passing through this place when I was living in Trivandrum earlier. It took nearly three weeks for the work to be completed. I was okay with that. I was not okay with the fact that the road was now not as good as it was before. The patched-up portion took away the fun and pleasure of driving through a good clean section.

Then there is the problem of the rain. Our roads are prone to get worse during the rains. Roads become littered with potholes and cracks, leading to more trouble. I have always wondered why couldn’t the roads be built considering these in mind. Why not build it in the best possible manner the first time? Why keep working on it again and again, thereby leaving it in a patched-up state?

As I grew I understood some of the reasons behind it. Corruption has a big say in this. If a road is built perfectly the first then how will the contractor get another contract? For that, the roads need to degrade.

Then there is the problem of the terrain we inhabit. I read this a long time ago. I didn’t cross verify it. I have a couple of friends who are civil engineers. Maybe I should have asked them. But I forgot about it. It says our topsoil is loose. It cant hold a lot of water. If the road is laid on such loose soil, during heavy rains the soil will wash away, thereby eroding away the foundation of the road. This will naturally result in the breaking of the road.

There was a recent issue with a bridge developing cracks within a couple of years after its inception. Its safety was compromised. One of the reasons was the seeping of rainwater from the tarred section to its concrete understructure. At the same time, another bridge was built by a well-known engineer a couple of kilometers away. In it he ensured that a proper channel was made for the water to flow away, thereby preventing any water logging issues in the structure. He did come across to say how this was important. These factors should not be overlooked with the amount of rain the state gets during the monsoons.

I reach the bottom of the downhill section. All the shops here and along the way are closed. There is a small junction. A small road forks away to the right. It goes on to join the main road I came in. I continue on the bigger road that I am on. A car climbed on the divider and crashed onto the post. It is a bad crash. The post was indicating the destinations ahead. It has bent over with the impact. As I pass it I quickly take a look inside. It is empty. I knew it. I look back at the car in my rearview mirror. The bonnet is crushed in. I can see the radiator. It has jumped out from its position. Since it has the same old story to tell, I continue with my ride.

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There is a shop that sells plants and pots. My friend suggested the place to me when I asked him for a shop selling indoor plants. I visited it when I was going to town for some work. The place immediately caught my attention. The whole vibe inside it was beautiful and cheerful. I went through the place, looking for something I can buy for my home. One of my friends had a bunch of cacti at his home. His wife used to put up posts on Instagram along with the cactus and their growing family of indoor plants. I think I was inspired by that.

I came across a cute little cactus in a cute little pot. It had a pinkish round flower-like thing growing out from its top. The color combination was really beautiful - green stalk with a vibrant pinkish-hued flower. I bought it without any second thought. The shopkeeper packed it carefully for me to carry in my scooter. I made it a point to visit the shop with Anna some other day.

Later that day when she came back from her duty, I showed her what I had bought. She was happy and surprised to see it. It was really cute. She placed it alongside a couple of plants we had in our home. Compared to them, the cactus looked tiny. Still, with its colorful flower, it commanded attention. Some of our friends who came to our house did ask us from where we had got it on seeing it.

The cactus is dead. It withered away after some months. It was supposed to be a rugged plant, one that could survive the immense heat of the desert and live without water. The shopkeeper had instructed us to water it once a month only, just a capful. We followed his word. Yet it succumbed.

I think it is the high humidity of the place. There is already so much water content in the air surrounding it. I don't think it is suitable for such an environment. It needs to be kept in the driest possible conditions, which we cant. After this incident, we didn’t buy any more cacti. It wouldn’t survive. Maybe we will buy them once we get to know how to take proper care of them. I need to learn about it more.

I wonder how I can get information now that the internet is down. We have completely become dependent on our mobiles with 4G internet to get any kind of information we want about anything almost instantly. There is no delay in it. Also, there are multiple outlets from which you can gather knowledge, not just a single one. Without any of this, I will have to fall back to the methods that were used to preserve and propagate knowledge before tech took over. Books!

I remember how encyclopedias were a thing in my childhood. I love books. I also really love to peer through the images of an encyclopedia endlessly. I used to have a couple of them with me when I was young. Among them, the best ones were by the publisher DK. Dorling Kindersley, if I am not mistaken.

DK had some of the best-illustrated books. I loved them. I had a couple of them. They were mostly sold by door-to-door salesmen who would quote a high price for it and then were ready to sell it at a tenth of it as part of their promotion drive. The book was hardbound with beautiful illustrations on the cover pages. They were enough to make me fall for them. The pages were high-quality. For school projects, I would take photocopies of the pictures in them to stick on my work. I could never think of cutting them out.

Then there was the Brittanica encyclopedia. It was a well-known brand. Some of my friends had them lined up in the showcase at their homes. I had wanted one but they were costly. So I never pestered my parents to buy them for me. I was content with the many other books I had.

As I moved on to my pre-teens, computers were becoming affordable. It was also when we were given computer classes at school. We were taught to use paint and word in the initial few classes of the academic year. Then we would be left out to do something in them. A PC would be shared by three or four of us. As soon as the teacher left us, we would load up games and play them in turns.

I told my parents the need to have a digital encyclopedia and PowerPoint to make presentations for my class. They were skeptical at first but I somehow managed to convince them. As soon as I got my PC, I made it a point to load the encyclopedias I had obtained from my friends. They came in a 10-CD set. CDs were the medium for storing stuff. I would copy the content onto my hard disk and access them whenever I needed. Later when I started running out of space, I copied them to CDs. Over time I had a good collection of games, movies, music, and educational material.

When DVDs appeared, they had storage equivalent to almost 6 CDs. They became the preferred method of storage. CDs quickly gave way to DVDs. My collection saw more and more DVDs. An encyclopedia came in a single or a maximum of two DVDs. It also brought in larger and graphic-intensive games.

By the time pen drives and SD cards made an appearance, broadband internet was becoming accessible to ordinary folks at their homes. The internet was the new sensation. Everything was freely available in it. There was a decline in storing knowledge and information on CDs and DVDs. The DVD players in PCs became unused. They gathered dust. They were mostly used to install windows after a PC crash or format.

I don't know if I have any of those CDs or DVDs with me anymore. They have become kind of obsolete. The laptops that come nowadays don't have a DVD slot. Nor do the PCs. The world has moved over them. With storage becoming cheaper and more compact day by day which is promoting the increased use of cloud storage, we have come a long way. I have a pendrive that is the size of a peanut. It can store 64 GB of data, which is one and a half times the storage I had on my PC way back in 2004.

The great swipe has taken away the biggest source of information from me. Without it, I am in the dark. I don't have a clue about what is happening around me or anywhere else. Nor do I have information at my fingertips. I have gone back a couple of decades when it comes to technology. Everything that was on the internet is gone. Unavailable. I don't know if I would be able to restore it, assuming that it is intact. I don't know.