Is The Computer Personal Enough?

When I first came to join my classes at NBMC, those early days outside home seemed like hell. Though the very interesting yet challenging pre-clinical subjects kept me occupied enough, no contact with the cyber world was like a torture to me! Even more depressing was the fact that my blogs, very dear to me, were gathering dust. It was at this time, with nothing much to do other than study, I decided to start writing a diary. But I was too lazy to keep up the good habit. The enthusiasm soon died away. Later on in 2^nd year, I got my laptop that became my favoured daily companion and now it was the diary’s turn to gather dust. It has been ages since I last filled its pages. I wonder why I didn’t. Two reasons actually. One, I was too lazy to write. More importantly, I was jotting down memorable events in my laptop instead, the diary taking a backseat.

Only recently, I resumed filling up its pages once again. Well I have read Robin Sharma recently. In Who Will Cry When You Die he reminds us the benefits of maintaining a personal diary. My sister happens to read RS books a lot. I even got 2 books for her from the famous Golpark bookstalls once – Who Will Cry When You Die and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Despite didibhai‘s insistence, I always avoided reading RS. “See, I don’t need all those gyan on self-improvement”. At which didibhai was quick to call me an antel! A few days ago, during the Puja hols, I picked up Who Will Cry When You Die and started reading it on an impulse. As I went through, I realised what makes RS a bestseller. He talks about very basic things. Small changes that one can bring in his/her life.  A lucid style of presenting things, free of jargon, makes his writing so appealing I guess. I read some 30 pages at a stretch and never got bored.  He reminds us of things that we all know but tend to forget. In short, I found RS just great and loved reading him. Other than the inspiration from Robin Sharma, the other motivating factor was stumbling upon the old diary one fine day while I was trying to fish out some old notes of yesteryear. And turning through the pages was like revisiting the past!

While I do realise the benefits of diary-writing, I still don’t know which one is better – writing in your diary with a real pen, or typing it away on your keyboard. Sometimes I seem to prefer the diary and tend to believe it is more personal than the computer. At other times though, typing seems the easier way. Writing with a pen and paper takes more effort it seems to me. But then it is the paper where you can pour your heart in a more candid way. Nothing can be more intriguing if your diary falls into wrong hands. Word files stored within the safety of Windows password seem to be a better option when it comes to privacy. But then there is the fear of data loss. The guy who fixes your computer types format:c and all your precious entries are lost in a blink. What is the use if nobody will ever read your diary? A diary is a physical entity that can be read by others. It can be passed on easily. It is a standing testimony of your ways of thinking, how you looked at the world and so on. Turning back through the pages of the diary can be a real treat – like a ride on a time machine.

I feel some ideas take better shape on the diary while some are better expressed on the computer. It has often happened to me that I started writing and got worked up all too soon throwing away the pen in despair; hit the laptop’s power button, raised a storm on the keyboard and transferred my brainstorm into binary bits and bytes. But still, if I were to put my random thoughts in a coherent manner on a lazy day when I have all the time in the whole world to relax, I will indulge in the luxury of diary-writing and avoid the glow of the screen for a change.