Underneath my pillow

I sleep with pure dynamite under my pillow. Sometimes it is a two fanged snake waiting to get at me; sometimes it is a harmless clown. But these are just my melodramatic definitions. In reality, the object under discussion is a little ruled notebook commonly known as a diary. When I first began keeping a diary, nearly seven years ago, I had no idea that it could be this powerful and addictive. At first, I wrote what a typical thirteen-year-old does: friendship and lifelong (?) treachery; how this teacher scolded me; will I ever have a gf bla..bla..bla... The entries were very ordinary, colorless and flatly written. "I ate mango pickle" or "I brushed my teeth with Colgate." It was a sort of compulsion in those days. I felt an obsessive need to write down everything that had happened during the day, howsoever insignificant and boring it might be. I was greatly influenced by guidebooks and ideas learnt in school. It gradually became a burden for me, something as drudging as making the bed. So I stopped the daily recordings for some time.

Then, as I grew up, I reached out for my diary more and more often. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. And this time around, it started being fun. I did not bother writing about anything that didn’t evoke an emotion in me. So I found it easy going. Today, I have filled up many pages and I still enjoy entering my thoughts. I have found out that now it is possible for me to be perfectly polite to a tiresome (but socially unavoidable) person because I can be sure of getting even in my diary by freeing myself of all ill-feelings and grudges I might have. I don’t need to analyze anything I don’t want to: I can note it down like a cool observer and come back to it when I feel like it. After a while, your diary gets crammed with all sorts of memories: poems, lyrics, random quotes, photos, cards, even bills and pressed leaves. It becomes easy to please people by remembering everything to the last detail: like when the chief guest wore mismatched socks or that their second cousin’s aunt is a doctor. In fact it is your diary that does all the dirty work, acting as a who’s who of dates and names and places that you can refer to when you want. And as it is filled with genuine emotions, a thought rarely has a chance to turn mechanical. Like George Orwell, I believe that a diary makes (and should make) sensational reading. My diary is jammed with the most embarrassing and awkward selections: truth, gossip, rumors. There are times when I feel like tearing away things written in the heat of the moment; things that shock and frighten myself. But I let it be. This landed me in trouble a couple of times when my cousins got hold of my diary. Things turned ugly because they became more furious than me – they could neither accuse me nor forgive me. But I still maintain that it was their fault: the first page of my diary declares that it is personal and hence is to be handled at one’s own risk. A diary is a combination of your feelings, mum and best friend. It is the worthiest and most reliable psychiatrist. It does not lie, it does not tell. It just makes you clear about your sentiments, relations and life as a whole. I have found out that the fear of discovery is the reason people cite for avoiding entries. But you can combat this by a secret code, lock and key, invisible ink. There is always fire to burn it away. I don’t follow anything because I don’t care if anyone is callous enough to read my diary. Curiosity will undoubtedly kill that cat. The only idea is to have peace of mind – to leave behind negative emotions and engrave joyful moments in ink. Even if the end result is a bomb waiting to explode underneath your pillow.