Four Days: 3

Day three.
Time seems to mean less now, the light outside just changing from black at night to the eerie grey of the daytime hours. The world seems to be grinding to a halt. I have not seen any panic, or looting, or the chaotic scenes you see in apocalyptic films. If anything, life is slowing, calming down. By my count we are two days from Shutdown, if that scientist was right.
Yesterday I walked down Connaught Place and found an open book shop full of English-language books on aviation and Sikhism. I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter, who introduced himself as Saran. I told him where I’d come from, and he smiled – “You have come a long way to witness the end of the world”. I spent an hour or so in the shop talking to Saran, about his two daughters, my family, Louise, God. We talked about it without talking about it. He explained he was not a religious man, but believed this might be the only way for the world to find peace. He seemed more like a philosopher than a shopkeeper, with a lot of wisdom and thoughts to share. I asked him how long he was planning to keep the shop open – many of the shops here are closed or bricked up – and he told me he would come to work as long as he had customers to serve. He told me the hospitals are getting full, but the doctors are starting to give up. What’s the point in fixing someone when we’re all about to be beyond fixing? I told him I will try to call in again tomorrow.
The streets here are still quite full, but quieter than they were yesterday. The excited chatter and friendly shouting we drove through yesterday has changed to a murmur. The urgency to get to work, meet deadlines, buy and sell and hit targets has gone. I can picture the Doyle’s office on Enderby Road, empty and silent, perhaps a phone ringing occasionally but all my colleagues elsewhere waiting for the final BBC broadcast and the Shutdown of the lives and homes they’ve built up.
India – Delhi – is not what I imagined it would be. I don’t know what it was like before this, but the shops and huge office buildings could be any other city in full swing. Parts of this place could be London. Perhaps I was expecting something smaller, different smells, more crowded. I suppose when the days were bright and the sun was burning, this was the India I always promised we could visit.
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I have taken off my watch and left it in a drawer in my room. I kept looking down at my wrist, counting down hours. If those news reports are to be believed, tomorrow is the day. It’s certainly getting colder, and darker.
This small hotel is now near enough empty. The only other guests I’ve seen are a young French couple staying a few doors down – I have spoken to the woman a couple of times passing in the reception. The man never seems to say anything, and his eyes are red as if he has been crying. We made eye contact briefly this morning and he quickly looked down at the floor.

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