The nitty-gritty of diary-writing
A month or two before the year ended, somehow a diary made its way home. A diary was irresistible — it compelled you to write. A pleasant smell wafted in the air the moment you picked it up. The pages were fresh and silken smooth, the kind you wanted to caress repeatedly and rest your cheek against.
Sitting at the desk, with the diary in front, and with a fountain pen in hand, you felt like an artist pondering over his fresh canvas, about to embark on making his masterpiece. What should you write was the million-dollar question.
One section had to be dedicated to mathematics sums. The interminable transactions between Ram and Shyam were recorded there. Ram had 16 mangoes. If he had to divide them equally between himself and Shyam, how many mangoes will each get? Strangely, copying these sums in a diary made even maths seem engaging.
From time to time, some advice came your way: “How will you improve your English? You should diligently write down the meanings of all the words that you don’t know in a diary.” Gloat, grin, stealing a furtive glance, wearing a pensive look —random words and expressions filled the diary.
Off and on, you required the diary to vent out your feelings. On the first day, you wrote, “Today, I am feeling angry.” Once this sentence was written, you hit the writer’s block. What more can you write when you are angry? The next day, you felt the same, but some modification had to be made to avoid repetition. “Today, I am feeling very angry.” Soon, this section resembled the ‘degrees of comparison’ topic in Wren and Martin — angry, angrier, angriest followed by a bout of happy, happier, happiest before slipping again to sad, sadder, saddest!
Everyone wrote English poetry, at least to submit a poem for the annual school magazine. Just as Goddess Saraswati had bestowed the gift of poesy on Kalidasa by writing on his tongue, I had little doubt that she did the same through this diary. “I felt on top of the earth,” I wrote, and immediately the next line wrote itself out: “The kind I have never felt since birth.” Reams and reams of poetry gushed forth, with not a moment’s pause or deliberation.
The most interesting section was dedicated to cricket. “SM Gavaskar caught Rixon bowled Thomson”. At the end of the series in Australia, I planned to do a thorough analysis — how many runs Gavaskar scored, where his weakness lay and how he could improve himself. Sadly, all this stayed in my diary and did not reach the Little Master.
Recently, I chanced upon a diary dating back to my college days. Strangely, it has just one cryptic entry. It read, “Gulab jamun — Rs 2.50”. I flipped the pages frantically to know what happened subsequently. They were empty. I reminisced, “Poor chap! Must have run out of money.” As they say, can words convey what is felt by the tongue?
