D for Diary

Dear Diary,

“Today was rough but manageable. I felt lazy and hangry at many instants but kept my cool and sailed through the day. My boss was absent and perhaps that’s what made it more difficult to pass time. My day started off late because my commute was stuck in traffic and thus I didn’t reach office on time. Once settled, I started working on a disbursement to be paid which literally drove me crazy. I wondered at one point as to whether I really love this job…”

This was an excerpt from my mind of how I would write my diary if I had one.

I had started maintaining a diary at a very young age in high school. But one day my mother happened to find it and as soon as I realized she had read it, I panicked and threw the book away. Well, living in a typical Indian household where you are judged from what you wear to what you speak has its shares of fears and boundaries especially for a girl.

After that day, I started diary writing in college where I lived in another state away from family caught up in a hostel space. Here, I made it a point to write daily describing all my ventures in the alien state with people from diverse cultures.

It was the peak of the Internet era; I spent time mostly surfing around and utilizing the free WiFi that college provided. One day I came across this online diary ‘OhLife.com’ where one had to just type in the entry for the day and it sent a daily reminder too. Being lazy as ever even to put pen to paper, I loved this format of typing in. And after that day there was no turning back to the book form of a diary.

Few years down the line, I received an email from the online diary website informing that they have shut down since they couldn’t finance the webpage and neither could restore the entered data to their users. It was very saddening that all the years’ entries could not be restored. So I had lost all the documented memories of college, the crushes, the plays and fights, the outings, etcetera to infinite space.

After that day the practice and habit of diary maintenance stopped completely. I look forward to starting one again someday. The feeling of venting out and expressing one’s state of mind to a mere book seems fulfilling and peaceful as it quietly accepts your thoughts without any judgement or questions.