I opened the door to my bedroom—which is also my living room and office—to find that my friend had already left. The first clue to his absence is the lock on his door and the missing pair of shoes outside, which, although I do not notice in their specific absence, leaves the other two pairs that are left outside the door in a state of destitution. This state of being orphaned is easier to notice than specific absence. The lock is shiny and is normally absent when my friend is present. But today the lock shines in its stainless steel glory radiating outwards from the latch, a mechanism that is absent in modern, polished doors which are either fitted with a door knob or just a keyhole. So it was the lock and the not-shoes that signalled to me that he had left already.

This left me with no choice, because to go to the dining hall alone in the morning rush of students is simply impossible, and staying back in the room for the day was equally unimaginable. My mental health was pegged to avoiding crowds and leaving the room, and I had decided a few days ago that I would take care of my mental health. So, this meant that I should shower, pick up my laptop and headphones, stuff them in my bag, and head out. In the shower, my brain kept replaying refrains of two popular self-help books: The Winner Stands Alone, and various combinations of How to Win Friends and Influence People; How to Win People and Influence Friends; How to Win and Influence Friends, and so on. In normal circumstances I would have avoided washing my hair in the morning because damp hair is as conducive as a human finger, and the touch-sensitive ear-cups of my headphones interpret the touch of damp hair as the triggering of a shortcut which announces how many hours of battery is left on the headphones. Sometimes it also pauses the music playback. But not today. Despite my intention to leave the dorm as soon as possible, my hair, tied in a top bun, felt as if it was a whole chicken covered with aluminium foil and was left in the oven to roast and steam. In other words: I washed my hair.

There are more details which ought to be reported here because they reveal more aspects of my life, but because there is another detail that I want to focus on today, I will leave them and turn to the incident.

There are campus buggies (golf carts) which ferry people back and forth from the hostel area to the academic area, then to the main entrance of the university, and back to the hostel area. My plan, because I was late today, was to hop on one of these golf carts and move to the academic area where my lab (I always had a problem in equating my workplace to a lab, because a lab is an institution of science, whereas I am a scholar not of science.) was situated. This meant that I would not take the campus autos, which took a different route and would take me to the cafe I usually spent my mornings in. As soon as I stepped out, I saw an auto leave, but there were a few golf carts loitering around, so I figured that it is the lab that I will be spending my morning in. This was not a bad thing—it was just different from the usual routine. I headed for one of the golf carts and as I was reaching it, an auto appeared. I asked whether the auto would take me to the cafe, and the driver responded with a nod. This is why I am sitting at the cafe and typing this story out.

What made me type this story out is not the chance events that made me reach the cafe, but a text to someone I had sent while in the auto, about how I happened to get an auto that would take me to the cafe. As I was placing my order for the usual cappuccino, it occurred to me that things could have been otherwise, and I could have been sitting in the lab without the cup of cappuccino, that I would be facing a window blind that was drawn shut, that I would have someone to the left of me and possibly the right, instead of the empty chair on the other side of the table in the cafe. It reminded me that among one of the very few things that are pleasurable on earth, imagining the absence—not a temporary absence, but an eternal non-existence—of events, things, and people is one of the most rewarding experiences. What if I did not have this cup of cappuccino on my table? What if I did not have my laptop open? What if I did not have my pair of noise-cancelling headphoens? What if the noisy group of kids on the neighbouring table were just not there? So many ‘What ifs’.