I ease myself and take the right turn. For a moment I was tempted to take the left turn. Not anymore. I need to get going and explore the areas I am familiar with. This is not the time to take a leisurely ride. This is the time to be serious and get on with the business, no matter how hard or insurmountable it is.

The main road is in good condition. On my right is a board advertising a restaurant that was serving lunch at a very cheap price. It is a bit surprising to sell it at such a low rate, almost half the price in other common restaurants in the city.

I should make a small point here. We generally use the word hotel to refer to a restaurant. If you hear someone saying to his family about going to a hotel, it refers to taking them out for lunch or dinner in a restaurant. One can also see that a lot of the restaurants have their names beginning with the hotel salutation - hotel this, hotel that. From the big ones to the small ones. This is quite normal. I guess the word hotel was the one to register in the minds of the folks. Plus it was much easier to say instead of the fancier restaurant. I think people might have even heard the word restaurant in recent times. I remember how my grandfather used to refer to the outside food he brought from having bought from a hotel.

Nowadays with the advent of branding and advertisement and all sorts of marketing, most hotels and restaurants are known by their names. Some of them have gone on to create a brand for themselves and become a chain. We all know who they are. The big ones. But in cities like Trivandrum, the older ones that have stood the test of time have expanded and currently have multiple outlets in the city. Their loyal fans make it a point to visit them regularly to have their favorite dishes.

Coming back to the point of selling lunch at the lowest rate possible, I have my doubts if they are even serving anything in it. No offense, but it is what came into my mind when I saw the board. When I visited my friend's house, I came across a shop selling lunch at the same rate. They were advertised as a place for the common folk. Janakiya Hotel - that is how they were branding themselves. His house is near a hospital. Oh wait, I have already mentioned him. His house was the one I took the diversion from Pattom junction. He was at his worksite. There was no one there. The hotel I am talking about is right in front of the small lane I took to reach his house.

The thing that surprised me about the pricing as it was the same price I had to pay to have a good vegetarian meal back in my college days. The rates have increased in the last ten-plus years. It is evident the prices are never going to come down. But still, I sometimes hope the prices would stay flat, maybe not increase for a couple of years while our salaries increased. A little bit of thinking and elementary knowledge of economics made me realize that this was never possible.

I had it in my mind to try lunch from this kind of place one day. I had even told her about this. She agreed to try it once. She raised her concern about the quality of the food being served here. To serve at such low rates, they must be doing something to bring down the cost. I too had the same questions in my head. Maybe that was why we never entertained the idea. I am not blaming them for serving at such a low rate. There are scores of people out there who are benefitted from this. For many, this would be their go-to place for a satisfying lunch. But these are the doubts I have. I mean them no harm or no ill favor. In fact, I wish they were open today. I would have gladly had their meal today. I would have done anything to maybe sit and talk to the people in it or to the one serving. I would do anything to meet someone and talk and try to make sense of the circumstances.

I continue on the road to Sreekariyam. The road widens a bit for a while. There are all kinds of fancy houses on both sides of the roads. Even more, houses lie on the pocket roads that diverge from the main road. Kerala is a state with a high population density. It was among the top in the country back when I was studying in school. It hasn’t changed. Everywhere you go, you will find habitation. People buy land near the roads and built their properties on those premises. The state is densely packed with houses. It is the first them my colleague told me when he came to the state for a short visit.

He had to attend a wedding close to my hometown. I decided to go and visit him after the wedding. When we met, the first and only thing he had to say with awe was about the huge houses he had seen on his way. He was fascinated by the architecture and the construction of these houses that were alongside the road one after the other. He asked me if this was how it is in the state. I said it was. To build a house is what one considers his final purpose in life here. Also, the house is a status symbol. The bigger the house, the more affluent you are. To make this people save their hard-earned money for a very long time. When they have enough money to build the house of their dreams, they go for it. I have understood that given a chance, most Malayalees would want to build the biggest possible house they can afford in their lifetime. Since there is a high majority of the middle class in society, you are bound to come across people who would have saved for a while and built a house that would showcase their status and maybe even up it a bit.

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This isn’t a generalization. But everyone would have a house for themselves, even if it is an apartment. To own one in your name is something everyone looks forward to in their lifetime. It is not bad or something I look at with distaste. It is just that I feel a lot of undue importance and relevance is given to it. A house is a house after all. You make it a home. Just like the one we were staying in now. It is an apartment. We have made it our home in time. It feels very personal to us. I don't know how we would feel when the time comes to vacate it. I guess we both are attached to the place very much.

As the morning cool breeze strikes my face, I feel the surroundings waking me up and keeping me away from any moody thoughts. The greenery around me is surely at work.

I am approaching Loyola college. I see the ground and their staff accommodation on my right. On my immediate left, I see a building under construction. Only the structure has been made. I am not sure what it will end up being. I am not sure if it comes under Loyola college or its group of institutions. They have a school just adjacent to the college.

I see the wall of the college on my left. I can see the buildings beyond it. I want to visit it one day and see the campus. I reach the main gate of the college. Right opposite it is the Sreekariyam police station. I come to a halt right in front of it. I turn off the scooter, park it and get out.

The station seems to be empty. Most probably it will be empty. But I will check it. It is a small house-like structure, single-floored. There is no light in the station. It looks all dark and eerie. I could have tested my walkie-talkie if I had brought it, but I don't have it. I skip up the stairs and reach the entrance. The table right next to the entrance has a register on top of it. The metal grill structure that is sometimes used instead of a door is partially closed. I open it and let myself in.

There are a couple of desks in the room I enter. Three rooms lead from here. One of them is for the SI. The others seem like rooms for the other senior staff in the station. I open the door to the office of the SI and peek in. The window at the opposite wall lets in enough light to see inside the room. There is a table that has a bunch of files, a PC, and his name board. Apart from that the room is empty. There is a cabinet and a shelf behind the chair. The shelf is populated with files and folders. The cabinet has steel doors that are closed. I come out of the room.

Next, I visit one of the other rooms. It too has a similar story to tell apart from the fact that the shelf is replaced by a cabinet that has glass doors. Inside them are files and folders. Just a little bit of cosmetic change.

After this, I walk to the third room. The door remains open and fastened to the wall permanently. The window in this room faces the main road. Light filters in from it. This is a big room. There are four tables and correspondingly eight chairs in it. I think they belong to the different subdivisions in the station. I don't know what they are. Nothing is specified anywhere. There are a couple of walkie-talkies lying on top of a table. I pick them up and see which channel they are tuned to. It is the same channel I am using, the one that was in the walkie-talkie I had picked. I pick one of them and press the push-to-talk button a couple of times. The static noise hums lightly from the speaker. I turn the volume and repeat the process. The noise becomes louder.

‘Hello! Hello! Can anybody hear this signal? If so then know that you are not alone. I repeat you are not alone. I will be waiting for you at Ulloor Junction at ten in the morning. Please come there and meet me. Let us work together to make sense of this. Stay safe. Over!’

I hadn’t thought of saying anything about it but I don't know. Something just go hold of me and told me to broadcast this message. I really don't know if anybody would think of using a walkie-talkie or any other form of radio communication. We cant communicate through normal radio. The only thing we can do is sweep through the channels and see if anyone anywhere is broadcasting anything in it.

I turn off the walkie-talkie and keep it on the table. I take the other one and max out its volume in the hope of someone passing by listening to the message I would broadcast later. Also, the messages I am broadcasting are one-offs. They do not repeat. The probability of someone accidentally stumbling upon a walkie-talkie that was broadcasting my signal at that very instance is again very small.

Technically I should be thinking of making my messages hang in the spectrum for the entire time. Only then would the odds be raised. I don't know how to do this. The only thing I can do is manually repeat my message from time to time with the walkie-talkie I have. It is not a long-term solution. Feeling a little bit of defeat at the prospect of not being able to up the odds, I get out of the room.

I walk out of the station. I check the register at the entrance. A pen is wedged into the last page in use. I open it up. It is a log of the people that had visited the station on the night before the phenomenon took place. The last entry is at eleven forty-five. I take a mental note of this and close it.

I come out of the deserted station and give out a loud sigh. Nothing makes sense. There isn’t any progress from yesterday. What should I do to make sense of all of this? Will I be able to get a grasp of it?