I reach Kuruvankonam junction. The roads joining at this junction come out at odd angles. The food joints in and around are all closed along with the shops. There isn’t any crashed vehicle to be seen. Only a rickshaw lies close to the pavement on my left. I continue straight.

Whenever I travel through this road, I get the feeling of traveling through a residential society. There are lots of houses and apartments on either side of the road. Amidst them are the restaurants that pop up every other fortnight. There is a good green cover too. All in all, it never feels like a busy main road.

At dusk, lots of food trucks open along the pavement. I haven’t seen them empty. They stay open well after ten at night. The city calls it a day and winds up for the night by nineish. Trivandrum is not a hip metro. It is a calm second-tier city.

As I have mentioned earlier, Kazhakuttam being the techie hub will see shops open till midnight. Some of them might even be twenty-four hours working, I don't know though. With the crowd that works there and calls it their home, one is sure to find customers to cater to at odd times.

Over the years shops have started to stay open after ten regularly. The generation they cater to now is comfortable getting out of their homes at odd hours and grabbing a bite, maybe even going for a drive. We have done that. We have gone for late-night drives following a movie or a dinner date. It is a great feeling. My parents have never done that. Well, they didn’t have the means for it in their early years. Still, I believe they wouldn’t have done that. For them, being in the warmth and comfort of their home is the preferred and sole way to end the day. I don't blame them for not being a bit more explorative. They did go out for parties that stretched well after midnight. But they always made it a point to come back home, no matter how late it got. I don't think they have ever stayed back in their friend's house.

The change in the thinking mentality of my generation when compared to my parent's generation is stark. Times have changed drastically. The world has come a long way in three decades. I keep thinking what if the essence of that time period never changed? What if we had the same thinking mentality as our parents? How would things fare out? How would life have been? How would we have comprehended the changes in technology and everyday life that were happening to us at such a blistering pace? One question leads to another. There isn’t an answer to this. It is a hypothetical question - what if. We can only entertain some of the infinite possibilities it offers.

My pace has slowed down a bit more in this stretch owing to the number of flats I need to check out while driving by. Nothing seems out of place till now. I can’t find any movement anywhere. Apart from the sounds of the birds and stray animals, there aren’t any other sounds. Everything is quiet and still. Only the wind makes it a point to bring in some movement to the trees and surroundings from time to time.

I have visited a couple of the new places here. I pass the juice shop where I met a friend after five years. I had entered the cake shop on the other end of the road one day just for the sake of seeing what they were offering. I didn’t buy anything from them. The shop in its tiny setting appealed to me. Further along the way, I see the shut food truck from which I had a shawarma with her. It was good.

Just before reaching Kowdiar junction is the bakery that is an icon in the city. When I came to do my college, this bakery was the only place that offered amazing desserts and pastries. It was well known among the local circle. It has a dine-in area as well. Couples used to frequent the place to have a nice pastry along with their sweet conversations. In recent years they have expanded with branches in various hot spots in the city. I have met people who are stuck to it and will not even try a new place.

Right before this is one of the outlets of the bakery and restaurant chain I frequently visit near the medical college, the one I visit with Anna from time to time. It has its own loyal base of customers. These two have carved a name for themselves among the local population. Along with having multiple outlets in the city, they have successfully managed to expand and increase their presence.

I am reminded of this one story my mother told me a couple of years ago. A fresher had come and joined her department. He was from north India. He was a bit apprehensive at first. Soon he got used to the people and the surroundings and found it to be not as bad as he expected. When asked about the food here, he was prompt to share his observations. One of his observations was interesting. He told us our state must be the only place where one will find so many bakeries. There is a bakery at every junction. Some of them even have a kitchen dolling out fast food.

His observation is very true. There are a lot of bakeries in our state. Every nook and corner will have a bakery serving the usual snacks and sweets along with biscuits, cookies, and whatnot. They never seem to go out of business. They will always have customers. Most of them also sell milk, curd, and other dairy products along with breakfast items and readymade stuff. Bakeries have evolved from their traditional meaning. They are more than their predecessors - selling bread and biscuits and cakes.

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I love bakery items. I am fond of all that you get in them. I sometimes wish I could savor all of them at a time. I genuinely believe even the smallest bakeries would have something memorable to offer, just like the one I mentioned about the restaurants.

That belief got a setback when I came to know the items in a bakery are mostly made in a central kitchen. We call it borma. They supply it in the city to all the bakeries that have subscribed to them. It meant the laddoos I got from all the bakeries in my hometown are from the same borma. The same goes for the bakeries in any neighborhood. There might be a few things that might or might not make it to the list, but otherwise, it is the same stuff.

The bakery chains have their own bormas. All their stuff is made in-house in their facility and distributed. They have become established over the years. I try them out and figure out what is good in each of them. But I want to see more variety.

I think this is not just my thoughts. I think our present generation is more into experimenting with new things. We don't want to get stuck with one thing and find pleasure in it for our entire lifetime. We want to be introduced to new things from time to time, constantly. Since this can only be understood by ourselves, it has spurred the growth of the independent baker.

These are people who bake in their homes a unique small batch. Initially, they might have followed a recipe. After getting a hang of things, they would have done something different in it - add a secret ingredient or just vary the process. Or maybe they can be really good at emulating it as per the recipe in the precise way mentioned over and over. In any case, they make their presence felt with what they have to offer. Once they hit their prospective customers and get a loyal fanbase, they venture out in their passion to bring new stuff to the public. What would have started out as a small cake business can scale up over time or maybe even overnight. Business would increase, forcing the creator to keep up the good work along with coming out with new recipes to keep their customers interested and on their feet.

It is great to be a creator. I have felt the feeling it gives you in some of the small projects I have undertaken. One of them was sketching out a picture from a reference using a pen. The whole time I was indulged in it, I felt as if I was creating something. The feeling quickly becomes that of zen. I was experiencing profound peace and happiness in that state. Time seemed to flow by without my knowledge. Or maybe I became time, I don't know. It was the best feeling ever.

Everyone would have gone through this feeling while doing something they really care about. What is happening is you are becoming a creator as you do it. You are creating something out of nothing, even if it has been made previously. A feeling of zen transcends you.

If you ask me, I want to be doing stuff like that for the rest of my life. I would be doing something I like all the while enjoying it. Honestly, that is not how this world works. We can't keep on doing things that give us complete fulfillment all the time. We need to do the other mundane stuff also. There is more mundane stuff to be done than creative ones. In one sense the creative stuff is an outlet from your normal mundaneness. They liberate you from the feeling of being trapped as a clog in the machinery. They give you the power to shape your own world and bring it to fruition.

I have given this some thought from time to time. What I feel is if we take on being creative every single day, soon it will pass into the realm of mundaneness. We get bored of it. Repetition is responsible for making things mundane.

But there is no escaping from repetition. It is how this world goes by. Just as seasons repeat, so does everything. There might be a tiny change in it. But still, it is a repetition. It is the way of life ahead. We have been living with it for so long. Going to school every weekday was repetitive. Playing the same game, again and again, was repetitive. Life is repetitive. It is an amalgamation of all these repetitive tasks going around one at a time.

I stop at Kowdiar junction. It is a busy junction. Or was. The road is totally empty. The nearby shops are all closed just as the others along the route. The traffic signal is off. It is a T-junction. The side opposite where I stand is the premises of the Kowdiar palace. It was where the royalty lived back in their glorious days. I don't know if they live here now. I think it has been handed over to the archaeological department for maintenance and upkeep. It is not open to the public. Maybe they still live there. I haven't enquired about it. Maybe I should have. Just after the pavement, the lawns start. They are meticulously maintained. Right in front of it is a red alert station. It is kept for alerting the police in case of an emergency. It usually calls for attention with its flashing red light. Now it remains dull, and out of place.

I look around at my surroundings once again. I look at the rising apartment on my left. It remains silent. I honk my horn continuously for a minute. It elicits a cawing response from a couple of crows. They express their displeasure by disturbing them with their crass cawing. I stop honking. They stop cawing. A truce is reached.

I take out my cell phone and unlock it. The networks are still down. Just in case. I put it back in my pocket and take out the walkie-talkie from the side pocket of my bag. It didn’t show any response yet. I cycle through the channels. The static of switching channels is the only thing I hear. I let out a deep sigh.