'Oh no, not another notebook with empty pages' I groaned as a medium-sized diary with brown binding tumbled out of a plastic bag. Such notebooks always put me in a dilemma - you cannot throw them away because the sight of all those unused pages reminds you of a hapless tree cut down somewhere. But you cannot keep them to jot down yummy recipes because as any city-dweller (barring Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis and others of their kind!) knows, there is never any spare space at home.

I turned the first page in trepidation and was surprised to find that the handwriting was mine. The dates indicated that the diary was written during the last 6 months of my Engineering college days. After all these years, I couldn't remember what exactly must have prompted me to write a journal at the end of the academic program but I guess maybe I wanted to keep a record of the last remaining college days of my life. I had written and then had duly forgotten about it until this day when the spring-cleaning had landed it - literally and figuratively - squarely into my lap.

It took me two days to thumb through all the entries but it was extremely enlightening to get a glimpse of the kind of person that I used to be during those days. Naive as expected but at times surprisingly philosophical as well. e.g. at one place I have jotted down how a child's voice or some movement from a passenger who is still awake in a night train makes you realize that though you may think that you are lonely, there are others with you. On another page I tell myself not to rely heavily on anybody and yet not to dismiss anyone as totally useless. Pretty heavy stuff - especially coming from someone who wasn't even 22 yet, don't you think?

There are countless references to things which have gone out of my life since ages - Wordstar, C++, Foxpro, sorting & searching algorithms, pointers and the dreaded Vivas :-) Then the subjects that we were supposed to study for the final year - ACA, SAP, OS, DBMS, SE.  SAP, OS and DBMS were pretty easy to guess. SE = Software Engineering. I think ACA probably meant Advanced Computer Architecture. The mere mention of the subject sent shivers down my spine even after all these years. I still remember the professor who used to teach us that subject. My diary mentions how he once allowed our group (consisting of all girls!) to read some important book provided we read it sitting in his cabin but happily lent the same one to a guy (who was a topper!) in our class. I remember that we had debated whether this was because he was partial to academically bright students or because he hated women (we had also speculated about whether this could be the result of some spurned marriage proposal somewhere in his past!). The pages also mentioned how the same professor had once put up a list of students whose signatures during the lectures and during lab sessions didn't match. :-)

You would think we must have had plenty of free time on our hands to be able to afford to spend so much of it on idle speculation. But all the romanticized ideas that I had formed over the years about my last days at college (the passage of time had dulled the memories of miseries and tense days!) evaporated after reading this diary. I was surprised to read of innumerable visits to the college and subsequent hours simply wasted in waiting for one professor or another or for other members of the group. I groaned as I read about the agonizing discussions on report formats and assignments. How I wish I had spent that time learning a foreign language instead! :-(

Oh, but wait till I tell you about some diary entries that made me almost roll on the floor laughing. They all had one and only one subject - Akshay Kumar. Yes, yes, the same one from Hindi movies. The first few pages of the diary are solely devoted to him, his smile and his eyes. Those were the days to get disturbed by the slightest bit of negative gossip about your object of desire. I have mentioned feeling jealous of Raveena Tondon and Pooja Batra (forget the fact that AK ended up marrying someone else altogether!). These pages at first amused me but they quickly turned boring - I must be getting old, finally! :-) Looks like I got over him in 2 months flat. Atta girl! But that was because I seemed to have found another object of desire - someone playing a character called 'Irfan Malik' in some TV serial. I don't seem to recollect him though.

The diary uncovered another surprising thing - my frequent visits to the temple. This must be the SiddhiVinayak temple that is close to my parents' home. During my early Engineering days at least, it was like any other temple accessible at all hours to anyone who wanted to meet God. The celebrities hadn't started walking barefoot from suburbs to visit the temple in the wee hours of the morning - yet. The vendors selling flowers and assorted religious paraphernalia were there but there was no wall erected by humans to protect God. There were no metal detectors, no combat vehicles and no armed policemen on duty. It was still a temple. But that is an altogether different topic of discussion. So like I was saying, I was surprised to learn that I used to go there so many times - mainly to seek peace and comfort, if the diary is to be believed. I felt good when I read that I used to put in my best efforts and leave the rest in God's Hands. Of course, there were occasional pleadings to let some viva or other be easy - exceptions to the rule :-) But largely, it seems that over the years I have kept to the same philosophy.

Of course, no girl's diary is complete without bitching about other girls, right? How can I be an exception? So I have written on and on and on about how some members of our group were becoming a pain in the neck. There are arguments and people not talking to each other for days. Countless phone calls back and forth between both sides of the battlefield. Strategies and counter-strategies. I remember that the group dynamics was turned right on its head by the time we graduated at the end of 4 years. People who had gotten along well for the past three and a half years found themselves in opposite camps and those who couldn't stand the sight of each other became allies. What do I think about all this after all these years? Nothing much. Maybe our side was wrong and they were right. Or we were right and they were wrong. Who knows? Not everyone likes you and you cannot like everyone. The more people change, the more they remain the same. These are the facts of life. The sooner you accept them, the better.

Life's experiences have the potential to change you but they can also make you stick more adamantly to your views and opinions. I used to believe that life is too precious to waste time on people that you don't get along with. And my life so far has reinforced this belief. I could be wrong but for now I think that I am right. :-)

Okay, so far as the English grammar and spelling go, I think the diary doesn't disappoint today's me much. There are occasional slips - at one place I refer to my loss of sleep as 'Amnesia'. And at another, I winced when I read 'When you mistake......'. Sometimes 'prove' has become 'proove'. Oh Boy!

The last entry in the diary is on some day in June. I talk about joining my very first company sometime in July and also mention that I don't think I will ever write in this diary again. (I was right about that. My next diary was kept years later, during my MBA days, in MS Word files.)

After I turned the last page, I sat there, unable to decide whether to tear up the pages or keep them - to be read and be amused by after a few years. In the end, though, I decided to tear them up. They will henceforth remain in only my memories - just like my Engineering days :-)