There’s this thing about me: I like notebooks. All kinds of
notebooks, especially those which look cute and colorful! As a kid I always
loved pretty stationery, I was that one kid in class with, if not fancy, a cute
pencil case, different kinds of pencils instead of the standard Nataraj,
erasers shaped as fruits, animals or just printed with cartoons, collecting
pretty junk for crafts, covering the school diary (which wasn’t standard. We
were free to decorate!) with a pink sheet, pasting cut outs of graphic drawings
and practicing cursive writing on the cover pages, getting pinkish and cuteish
stuff as gifts whenever dad made any trip. Ever since I remember, I’ve always
had a personal notebook. The one stacked in between other books and retrieved
time and again to jot down anything interesting I came across, or thought of.
The name of an interesting movie, quotes from Children’s Digest I liked, books
I’ve read and want to read (yeah :P ), anything and everything. I’ve lost most
of them, for there was always a new one.
I don’t think I ever finished any one of them. If there was
a new one which was cuter than the previous one, I’d shift. Of course, I’d
first make promises and classify the notebook for a certain something. ‘This
is going to be my quotes book’ or ‘this one will be only about books’,
but I’d end up jotting down just whatever I wished. Two days ago a friend told
me of a 75% discount on books in those Mediamart kiosks at metro stations.
While returning from college, I picked up a book on palmistry for mom (who
reads such stuff for time pass) and just then I was drawn to a different shelf
with different kinds of notebooks. The plain school kind, the spiral, college
kind and then those with Superman, Batman, Barbie on them! I had a two minute
mental debate over Superman/Batman for my brother, who isn’t very fond of
notebooks as such, but he always appreciates whatever I get for him. And I
figured it’d be a nice reminder of the childhood days. As for me, I had been deliberating
over the idea of having an ‘idea notebook’ handy, since while travelling when I’m
in the ‘relaxed’ mode, I do get a lot of funny, weird but workable ideas for
writing. And I tend to forget those very soon. So I picked up a small purple notebook
for the purpose and yeah, it’s still unused but looks very cute. ;)
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| The idea notebook! :D |
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| My property, y'know? |
This morning I picked it up to jot down story ideas and as I
opened up to the first page, feeling that surge of excitement that comes with
something new, already imagining all the spectacular ideas the book would
contain, feeling the cardboard and paper beneath my fingers, all smooth and
perfect for writing, it simply made me remember all the wonderful similar
feelings I’ve always had previously. Thankfully, I still had a few of those
notebooks, which I took out and went through again. Ah, the memories! ^_^
Starting with the earliest (among those I’ve got still),
this one was gifted to me by an aunt in Ludhiana when we visited their place,
once upon a time in 2002 when I was 10 going on 11, and the first entry is a
recollection of our trip to Amritsar and how I came upon that diary.
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| Cute! :D |
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| In case you're wondering, I've deliberately messed up the details! |
It’s funny to see my kiddish handwriting, trying to describe
everything as it was, crossing out a wrong spelling and following it with the
correct one. Here’s a small sample: “When we reached Amritsar and when we
were near the hotel, we stopped to see the Jalianwala Bagh. I had never been to
Amritsar. This was the first time I went. My father took me (^ inserted:
and my family) there. There, we saw many things like the place from where the britishers
(small b overlapped with a capital B) fired their guns at innocent
people, the place where the britishers (forgetting to overlap this one with
a capital B) fired on the walls ie, the spots of guns bullets on walls and one wall has’nt changed.”
One more: “We went to Golden Temple. There were many
people rushing. First, we had to walk a long distance to enter it. It was at
in the middle of the Sarovar. It was made of gold. We enjoyed very much. We
saw Ber trees also. My father told me a story of that tree and in the last he
told me that it was a magical tree. My mother and I washed our hands and faces
in the Sarovar under the Ber tree.”
Not to be narcissistic or anything, but I think I was a
pretty cute 10 year old. A few pages on, dated August 2005, I’ve written how my
brother made a ruckus one evening and how I hate him for it. That was the time
when dad had to go on an official trip and he asked me to write down whatever
trouble I had and he’d see it when he returned (the awesome days when cell
phones weren’t stuck to our ears). It’s heart-warming to just see the change in
one notebook. A few years on, in a more controlled and better cursive, I’ve
made a list of ‘Books I long to read’, following it with some quotes I
made up and the stories behind them. I wonder if kids these days even make any
memories this way. I don’t think digital devices can make up for it in any way.
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| Pink love ^_^ |
Then there was this pink one featuring Barbie, which did not
seem enough and so I pasted more Barbie stickers on the cover. This was when I
wondered if I could write a diary entry every day. Turns out I could not,
because I skipped a lot of days and then just stopped. But it’s funny and
nostalgic to read about high school and homework issues, how my class was
suspended for three days for scribbling on our school shirts and I was scared
as hell.
While in college, I got this one with a Hannah Montana
pop-up on the cover. And yeah, a heart-shaped mirror too. I used to be a huge HM
fan while in school, never missing those episodes. HM was the reason I was
glued to Disney channel. This one contains self-motivating stuff. Lists of
things I can do, those I’m proud of, those I wish to do. The first cover is
full of HM stickers too and the first line reads, “If life is a journey,
then your vision is a picture of your destination”, dunno where I sourced
it from.
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| Hannah Montana :D |
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| Inside first page! |
Apart from these, there have always been notebooks for other
stuff, like I mentioned earlier. I was gifted this pink one by my dad when he
went abroad and got it for me! I admit, I am a miser when it comes
to using it, considering how it’s so cute and all and I don’t want to finish it
soon. This one is mostly bookish and the first thing I did with this was to do
a mind-map for ideas for my book blog (back when I just had to start Journal ofa Bookworm). The red one is my present, favourite notebook. I’ve covered the
first page text leaving only my name, because it’s got all sorts of dreams and
secrets. ;)
As I’m writing, I’m remembering others I’m missing, those I
haven’t located today, but I know they’re somewhere near, just out of sight. I
love all of them to bits. I can be weird in a lot of ways, but who cares? This
weirdness defines me. Do you have any such fetish?
