LOGGED IN AT 18.7 LATITUDE AND 79.9 LONGITUDE - AKHILLESSH SALLA

 LOGGED IN AT 18.7 LATITUDE AND 79.9   LONGITUDE 

 

At least an hour before the sky turns orange, Hrishikesh wakes up.
Not too alarm — that hasn’t been needed in a long time. It’s just how his body moves now, in sync with a rhythm no clock can measure.

He brushes his teeth, slips into his sandals, and steps outside for a casual walk. Most others have already begun their day. The air carries a calm hum — not the silence of sleep, but the quiet of people who’ve already opened their doors, lit their stoves, begun their routines.

There’s something special in the atmosphere. Maybe it’s the gentle light, or the lingering scent of night rain on damp soil. A kind of fragrance you only get when trees breathe easy and the earth has been touched gently.

People greet him — not with a “Good morning,” but a nod, a “hi,” a “hello.” Familiar faces, easy energy. A few offer him chai. He smiles and refuses.
“I don’t drink tea,” he says, like he always does.
They smile back, like they always do.

He walks for almost an hour, not for fitness or photos, but for the feeling. He doesn’t count the steps. There’s no goal.

By 6:00 a.m., he’s back home. Steam rises from the cup waiting on the table — his mother’s filter coffee, just the way he likes it. His father is already seated in the corner, holding the day’s newspaper, skimming state and national pages. No noise, no unnecessary talk. Just routine — the kind that feels more grounding than boring.

Outside, a bike honks — short, polite bursts.
His friend’s here, waiting.

Hrishikesh heads out again, this time with a bag over his shoulder. They roam, as they often do. Visit places that never change and still surprise. Meet a few old friends. Share a few new laughs. Watch the trees sway like they know something about time.

When he returns, the breakfast is ready — the usual: idli, chutney, maybe dosa. His father’s reading is done, and the living room smells of early morning TV and turmeric.

He finishes quickly, heads to his room, and settles at his desk.
His fingers hover above the keyboard. A slow inhale.

It’s 9:30 a.m.
He logged in at 18.7° latitude and 79.9° longitude.

He begins reviewing the project he built — a result of relentless creativity, sleepless nights, and a kind of patience only coders understand. At one point, it felt like the code would never compile without throwing a thousand errors. But now, it runs. Seamlessly. A system crafted with care, frustration, and silent triumph.

He isn’t debugging. He’s just... watching it. Like an artist looking at a finished painting, knowing the world may never understand how hard it was to create.

He waits for the manager’s call — a new project perhaps, a meeting, a task — because in software, there’s no real pause. Even your idle moments are on a leash.

But before that, his phone rings.

It’s the client.

Their tone is far from impressed.

The output, they say, isn’t what they expected. Not what they had in mind. They’re disappointed.

It’s not Hrishi’s fault. He built exactly what was asked — even better, perhaps. But the client’s vision seems to have shifted. Evolved. Or maybe it was never clear to begin with.

He listens, quietly. No arguments, no frustration. Just a soft smile.

"Sometimes, it’s not even our fault — yet the situation tightens around us, dragging us deeper than we deserve. It’s strange how life hands us consequences heavier than the choices we made. But that’s how it’s been — not always fair, but always real."

He went ahead and started modifying things as per the new request. It was taking more time than it should’ve — but he wasn’t in a rush. Not anymore. The old Hrishi would’ve  hung up with frustration. But this version of him is different.

Go back eight years. Fresh out of college, he moved to Bangalore for his first job — a city that didn’t promise magic but offered something rarer: a life untouched by the past. No father watching the clock. No mother calling him back mid-step. Just a boy with a small suitcase and a quieter kind of hope.

Freedom wasn’t loud. It didn’t roar. It came like a whisper — in the sound of his own footsteps on unknown streets, in the late-night meals no one scolded him for, in the silence after switching off his own lights, not someone else's.

He had no one to answer to.                                                                                                        And that terrified him.                                                                                                              But it also… healed him.

His job? Stressful. His manager? Mechanical. His room? Barely furnished. But when you’ve lived a life bound by "no"— even a little "yes" tastes like a revolution. So he lived.

He found comfort in chaos — in the pub lights and after-hours music, in colleagues who didn’t know his past, in conversations that didn’t end with advice. For them, it was fun. A break.

But for Hrishi, it was freedom disguised as noise. It was the first time in his life he could exist without asking for permission.

No explanation. No shrinking. Just being.

That’s what Bangalore gave him. Not success. Not friends for life. But something even more personal — a private room inside himself, untouched by anyone else's expectations.

It was a mix of frustration and fleeting happiness. Bangalore felt better than any place he'd been—vibrant, alive, and strangely comforting. His private space felt like heaven, a long-awaited escape from the rules and restrictions of home.

Drinks, weekend parties, and a brush with western culture slowly became his new routine. Most of his salary disappeared into food orders and monthly celebrations. The loop was tight: room–office–pub–repeat. And strangely, he didn’t mind.

Three years passed without a single visit home, not even a quick meet-up with old friends. Somewhere, between the noise and neon lights, he had built a world of his own—loud from the outside but quiet within.

The work stress, though, never left. At times, he found himself snapping in silence, angry at nothing and everything. A thousand parties couldn’t numb the weight of burnout. The laughter around him always felt a second too late.

It was one of the finest struggles — and yet, the feeling of breaking free from it never truly arrived. He had landed the dream job he once longed for, tasted the freedom he once craved, and lived the city life he'd imagined. But the work stress never eased. The constant pressure, the race of the world moving faster than he could catch up with — it all began to wear him down. Three years passed in this blur of deadlines and distractions. And then, the virus struck India. It was everywhere — on screens, in headlines, on everyone's lips. Fear became a shared language. His company announced work-from-home, and soon after, his parents insisted to return to their village. Reluctantly, and partly due to the rising cases in Bangalore, he gave in. He packed up, vacated his room, and returned home — to the place he once saw as a cage, but now seemed like the safest corner of the world.

A fourteen-day quarantine followed. Strangely, it brought him peace. No one he knew nearby was infected. The village was calm. Silent. Safer than the chaos of the city. For the first time in a long while, he felt the noise around him dim just a little.

The fear that haunted city walls never fully reached his village. In Bangalore, every news alert brought dread — people hesitated to hug, to talk, even to breathe freely around their families. But in the village, the air felt lighter. The virus was real, yes, but fear didn’t consume people. Elders talked across balconies, children still played from a safe distance, and somehow… life didn’t freeze. It was the contrast that struck him the most — not just between two places, but two states of being. Bangalore had always rushed. Village life, though slower, now felt fuller. He hadn’t visited in years, but this time, it wasn’t just a visit — it felt like a return. His parents lived here all along. Before, he only remembered the scolding, the shutting down of his voice. But now, there was calm — they listened. They even set up a workspace for him: a simple desk, a study chair, decent Wi-Fi. There wasn’t much, but it was enough. And strangely, he didn’t need feel-good movies anymore — life itself felt kind for once. COVID swept through the world, but some things fell into place. He was among the few given permanent work-from-home. Others rushed back to cities, but he stayed. One year became five. He thought boredom might find him, but it never did. Not when the fields called, not when evening walks turned into long conversations, not when the wind whispered more than office walls ever could. That day, he wrapped up his extra client work by 1 PM. He stepped out, went to a friend’s home, laughed like he hadn’t in years, and they headed to the open fields for cricket. As the sun dropped low, he ran into old classmates — boys he hadn’t met since 9th grade. The kind of reunion you don’t plan but life delivers anyway. He came home at 7 PM. No client messages. No manager calls. Just silence — the good kind. The kind that doesn't isolate but lets you listen to yourself. He sat back at his desk. Not to work. Just to reflect. Maybe he didn’t need much — just a chair, a screen, some air, and people who remembered who he used to be.

He logged out at 18.7 latitude and 79.9 longitude.