My first Dairy

The year I turned fourteen, for the first time I felt the need to keep a diary, the reason still eludes me but somehow I just felt the need. Now when I reflect back on that I almost feel kinship with Anne Frank (The one of Diary of a young girl fame?) but it's just our age that coincides, nothing more, I mean the age we first decided to join the company of our new friend so close, so dear to us- our diary.
My diary was the first true friend I ever felt so close to because I knew that I could share any secrets, any part of my life without any hesitation. I knew I can go on sharing my feelings without ever being judged about the kind of things happening around me. I simply loved bed time. I would snuggle up in my bedroom, close the door and start with, "Dear diary….blah…blah!" and the conversation would range from what happened in the shop on that day to the kind of thoughts that ran through me. I knew I could pour out any kind of emotions that ran inside me, for instance I asked my sister to give me money which she refused, mother's pet that she was she was equally stringent when it came to money matters. That's why my mother always kept her near the cash box while I was never entrusted with this responsibility. I hated this fact and it went inside my diary. I would write about going to a beach, building sand castle (I didn't have any romantic things to do on a beach than building sand castles back then), the sea wetting my feet and I dreamt of leaving my footprints in the wet sand and so many such dreams went into that diary.
A year passed in my diary's company and many of me had also walked into that small book that I lovingly kept under my pillow. It was after the pilgrimage to Bodhgaya, on our return journey I lost my bag and my precious friend which was in it. But all thanks to my little friend, because I had written my address in detail the people who had taken my bag in the darkness mistaking it to be theirs returned it. The first thing I checked was my diary and it was there. But somehow I smelt unknown hands shuffling the pages. I was right, those people who had found my bag were sherubtse college boys and they had generously read the entire diary and written their comments in the last page, the page that was for the 1st January of 1996. I felt sad thinking that I have lost myself to some total strangers. So, though not ungrateful to the people who returned my bag, I tore my diary and put it in the fire.