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My Writing
| It all started because of a teacher whose name I no longer remember. Way back when I was still in my teens. It all started in a small classroom that was almost like home for all of us hostellers in the afternoon hours after lunch on weekdays. |
| I always believed that I was somewhat better than the rest as far as my English grammar skills were concerned. Somewhere in her heart, I think she thought so too. Not that that made life any easier. She always seemed to go out of her way to expect as well as extract the best from me as well as the entire class. A 7 on 10 was a regular expectation from me, even though she didn�t hand even those out too frequently. An 8 or 8.5 were what would actually please me. |
| We would work day after day on various aspects of the English subject. But what I enjoyed most were the hundred and fifty word essays that she made us practice. Words are so precious when you are allowed so few that you need to ensure you are able to say all you want to and much more. |
| I remember she once gave us the topic �If� and my starting line was �If the world was square and I were a hare, things would be quite different today.� I only got a 7 on that one though I remember I had worked extra hard to make it rhyme. |
| To go a few years further back into history, I must confess that the art of writing was really impressed upon me by the book � The diary of Ann Frank. There were a lot of profound things that a lot of people took away from this book. What I took away was the thought that something so simple could have turned out to be something so important, to have touched so many people, to have told such a simple story with such profound ingenuity that all one could do really was hope that one day one�s life would also be as inspirational. |
| In any case, I began to write. I took a small regular single line school notebook, covered it with pictures instead of the usual brown wrapping paper (that would turn out to be my first collage though I certainly didn�t know it at the time) and named it �Janet�. I thought it would be a better idea for it to have a name and hence a life and personality rather than an inanimate object addressed only as �Dear Diary�. |
| Janet lasted only a few months. Since I didn�t see the need to restrict the details of my life to only a page each on each day, I wrote as much or as little as I wanted, and started a new diary (read new notebook) christened with a new name each time. I hardly missed a day but whenever I did, I made sure I wrote the highlights of it the next day. |
| Writing a diary had become so much a part of my life that I even got a special shelf constructed in my room where I placed each religiously in chronological order. It had become my trusted companion; my life�s work and I often dreamed not only about looking back and reading about my life happily when I�d be old and gray but also about publishing my memoirs one day. |
| But the mind works in ways that not too many can understand. One day when I was older though certainly not wiser, I took out all the diaries that I had written over the past nine years. There were 54 of them. All of different shapes and sizes with a different cover, packaging and a different name. I took all of them and placed them into a large cardboard box. I then proceeded to carry that box downstairs and burn it. |
| If I had been put on trial, my lawyer would certainly have argued temporary insanity. It was an act of stupidity that I would not easily forget or forgive myself for. Somewhere in my mind I had reasoned that my diaries contained too much information that I might get into trouble, that I now had so many close friends to confide in that I didn�t need a diary any longer. I�m not sure what I was thinking. |
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If I had buried rather than cremated them, the Epitaph would have read:
Bhavna�s Diaries 1987 � 1994 Trusted friend, companion and confidant. |
| There was a major distinction between my writing style in my diary and in my English teacher�s class. In the former I wrote for myself, I wrote the thoughts I thought, the events that occurred, the feelings I felt. I wrote for no one�s eyes except my own. In school however, I wrote to be read. I wrote to make a point, to establish the credibility of my statements and I wrote above all for grades. For some actual gain or achievement. |
| In my diary I wrote what I wanted to write, whereas in class I wrote what the reader wanted to read. |
| And that�s where it all began to go wrong. I began to believe that my lack of celebrity status would ensure that no one would be interested in publishing, let alone buying my memoirs. I began to believe that I needed to move away from my style of personal essay writing towards fiction or feature writing. |
| And I forgot that one writes first and foremost because one has something to say. |
| I experimented with a lot of styles. I wrote newspaper articles, movie reviews, poetry in the form of sonnet�s, travelogues and yes I even tried my hand at fiction. All have been incredible learning experiences, but nothing has ever given me the sense of satisfaction my diaries had bestowed so easily. |
| I do miss my diary writing. Not least because of the pressure less freedom of expression, but most because of the continuity and omnipresent prevalence of a stabilizing factor of my life. A factor that reminded me everyday that how I handle something now should be determined by how important it would be when I read it five years later. A factor that can never be recreated, nor restored. |
| Yes, I do miss my diary immensely. Even though I know today that my English teacher would barely have given me a 7 on it. |
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