Saira was an intelligent girl of third grade, a very thoughtful girl. She wanted to be like her father when she grew up. Her father was a renowned journalist, whose popularity extended beyond political realms. She was quite impressed by him and his writing skills.

One day, she went shopping with her mother and bought a large, colourful diary with Barbie prints on top of it. She was immensely happy as she thought, ‘Now I can be like my father who keeps on writing all his stories in his notepad. Though my diary is way more beautiful than his!’

She artistically wrote her name and class on the first page and decorated it with designs using markers and glitters. The next day when she went to school she realised that she hadn’t prepared for the test she had that day as she was occupied with decorating her diary all time. Regardless, she was able to perform exceptionally well and scored seven out of 10 marks.

Immersed in happiness, she decided to enter this in her diary. She penned it down and decorated that page with Doreamon stickers. She then started writing her daily routines on the diary, every little accomplishment and every little fight with her friends.

One day, she was not allowed to visit her friend’s house; it was also mentioned in diary with black wavering clouds on top as a mark of ‘bad day’. And when she got scolded by her mother for wasting all time on diary, she mentioned that in diary too with the heading ‘Mum hates you, my diary!’ and drew black skeleton sketches. Then hid the diary as she didn’t want mum to read what she had written in her diary.

Day by day, Saira got more obsessed with her diary as it was giving enormous pleasure to her. Saira was soon promoted to class four where she made many new friends. Some of her friends were spoiled and arrogant, and Saira would write stories about them under title ‘Ali, my ill-mannered friend’, ‘Afshan, my fashionable friend,’ etc.

She soon became close to her friends Ali and Afshan. And then her entry in the diary would be like, ‘My friends are sweet.’

Both Afshan and Ali were below-average in their studies, their focus was more on bullying others, stealing their stuffs, going around bunking school days, lying to parents etc. Saira’s diary mentioned all these details.

Saira appeared to be getting much inspired by both her friends and often did as they did and it gave her new adventures to enter in her dairy. She would skip her routine homework and would make the lamest excuses to teachers. One day, she marked her day as ‘Daring task 1!’

The trio planned stealing their friend’s geometry box. They succeeded. And then she entered ‘Daring task 2’, and the tasks continued and were all mischievous activities. She was delighted with her increasing number of daring tasks. Her diary was all adorned with marks of increasing successes. Saira, Afshan and Ali eventually failed in the final exams. Afshan was sad a bit but Ali felt nothing … for Saira it was ‘Number 10th daring task!’

Her mother was called for the parent-teacher meeting and was explained that Saira had always been a good student until recently and is found indulging in useless activities. Her mum became concerned and decided to find out what exactly had been taking place. She looked for Saira’s diary and read each page.

Mum was so shocked to read about what Saira had been up to that she started crying. She found that both Afshan and Ali whom Saira herself had mentioned as mischievous and ill-mannered earlier influenced her. She also realised that Saira had been naive as she had honestly mentioned every detail so honestly. Mum called her and decided not to scold her.

She took her in her lap and explained things patiently and lovingly, “Dear, you are an intelligent girl. You know mother is the best friend of her child. You should share your routine with me as I am your friend. Your dairy records things you share in it but can’t guide you or tell you what to do and what not to do. Diary is just a stapled bundle of pages. It doesn’t take care of you or understands you, it only keeps records. You need to share your life and events with your mother first, who is a walking, talking and a caring dairy!”

Saira realised the importance and truth of her mother’s words and felt ashamed of the mistakes she had made. Now she decided to tell all her stories to mother first and then enter it in her diary.

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 9th, 2016