When Time Stops

I found my old diary while shifting my house. I had nearly forgotten about it until the time I found it again while packing. In the hurriedness of shifting I forgot it once again and re-discovered it while unpacking. Out of guilt I decided to give it a permanent place among my story books so that it is always there in the vicinity of my eyes. And one a leisurely afternoon I decided to give it a much awaited read. The cover had the year embossed on it … “1999”…

It was my first attempt to pen down my thoughts when I was in class ten, being inspired by the Autobiography of Pricess Jahanara, the book which I borrowed from School Library. The first diary note describes my inspiration and how awestruck I was reading the life of a princess which was not as glamorous as I had expected it to be. Sad that I hadn’t mentioned the date of the note. So, thats how it started...

The diary covers my life from class X to the first year of college. When my only Ambition in life was to score good marks….Tension meant the Chemistry exams….Only treasures being the friendship bands .... Love meant glue-ing pictures of Aamir khan in between the pages of the diary…..the greatest fear being performing on stage…..taking a break meant quarreling with my sister over a trifle pencil box or reading a comic hidden in the course book……Rebel meant slapping boys on their slapstick remarks…

I had even kept the snippets of songs written on the paper that helped me during the numerous Independence Days, Gandhi Jayantis and Republic days on stage. O’ how each paper wrinkled and yellowed with time took me back to the time when I had actually written them.  I also remembered reciting poems or prose in class, and how my then best friend Debashree took the responsibility of prompting me in between the lines when I forgot. Though I never ever looked at her during my recitation, to avoid the series of non-stop laughing without a reason publicly. The class teacher had even changed our seats to the opposite corners of the class, but with least success.

I found a lot of sketches of mine too dated back to 2000 when did  small quick sketches when I had to pretend that I was studying hard at home or school.  A sketch of “Prospero and Ariel”, from the cover of my course book  The Tempest, by Shapespeare , Or the “Backyard” where I often sat during sunny winter mornings.

Class XI and XII, new school and new friends…my first ever bench partner, So-mad-rita Das( in DNS we sat in single chairs)… being the permanent last bencher for the first time and loving it….sleeping in Chemistry and English classes….understating nothing of physics being taught… the pranks we played in class…. I had penned down all.....

Then my first step into the college, away from my parents..a whole new world with so many different people from different parts of the country.

Please take me back in time. The golden years of my life… I want to re-live the innocence and simplicity again.

Trijeeta.

11/11/2012.