Monday, December 10, 2007

mid day melodrama

My 2008 diary arrived in the post today. I used to order my annual diaries from Tulika, but to my great disappointment they have discontinued their Celebrate India series, forcing me to turn elsewhere. Last year, in Brussels I purchased a ridiculously overpriced Herge Diary filled with gorgeous reproductions of line drawings, coloured illustrations and Tin Tin covers reprints from the master’s drawing board. This year I went with something from Mslexia, a writer’s magazine I subscribe to. Small and compact, the Mslexia diary comes packed with submission deadlines for prestigious writing competitions, guidelines and other handy information.

So today, I filled in reminders of birthdays and anniversaries in the year to come. There were the regulars – siblings, parents, in-laws and best friends. New entrants – people I’d met in the last year or so who have come to mean a great deal to me, and then there were those I left out. Friends I am no longer in touch with, people I have slowly drifted away from over the years. It saddened me for some reason, not including them in the diary. Leaving a dated box empty was all it took to exclude them from my life.

8 comments:

MS CUTE PANTS said...

Sad to no longer include those friends yes, but a necessary evil.

Anonymous said...

I am keeping my fingers crossed that mine was one of those birthdays that went into that diary :)

Anonymous said...

shoefi, doesn't it work the other way round - you excluded some people from your life - over time? and therefore, have left their places empty in the diary...?
btw, my birthday is on facebook :)

Neha said...

mine is on the 28th of july :D

Anonymous said...

Am I an "in-law"? That seems vaguely pejorative.

Anonymous said...

Hi Shoefi

I used to work at Tulika - did some illustrations and graphic work for the last diary that they had, in fact, published - rather sad that its no longer being done. They were lovely :(

Lekhni said...

I wonder how those friends react. Will they notice the absence of that familiar email, or greeting card? Or will they be too busy with the new people in their lives ?

Will it be that on their birthday, Shoefi remembers, despite the empty box in the diary, but the friends themselves do not :(

Anonymous said...

I never knew people still used good-old diaries. I always wondered what people used them for!