My notebook

I finally bought my little notebook.

Long ago, I realized that my penchant for making lists meant that I was constantly noting down all the stuff I needed to do, wanted to do or had to keep an eye out for, on various scraps of paper. The scraps of paper would invariably disappear alongwith all my bright (alteast they seemed so to me) ideas. So I got a little notebook to carry around and note down stuff.

It turned out to be brilliant.

I started a page with various songs I had to download. A song caught in the in-flight entertainment programme. A song on radio while driving. All of them went into my list and would faithfully be referred to when I had to download music into my IPod.

I began to write down all the books I wanted to read. Books reviewed in Business Standard’s excellent column by Nilanjana Roy. Books reviewed in blogs. An entire sci-fi list which a friend recommended. Every time I went to Landmark, I could pull out the notebook and I was ready to go.

Lists of shopping to be done for the week or in the long run.

Lists of home décor ideas.

Somehow everything I wanted to remember, I could write it down in a page in the notebook and it was safe there till I needed it.

Expectedly, the notebook ran out of space.

I bought another one but it turns out that not every book is amenable to being carried around in your bag or to writing down stuff.

My new one was efficiently pre-divided into little segments, was on ruled paper and small but bulky. I could not bring myself to write down stuff on it.

All my thoughts and lists on songs and books began to look like stale office memo lists.

It was one of those moments that I realized that being a list-maker and being in need of free form could co-exist together. Weird.

So the habit disappeared of noting down stuff gradually disappeared and a long period of wandering around with the vague feeling of ‘what was I trying to remember’ happened.

Today, finally I hit upon a store with lovely little notebooks.

My new book has got an unusual orange cover, it has a band that keeps the pages together, is light enough to be carried around everywhere and when I inaugurated it with making a list of all the little changes I wanted to carry out in our living room, the words just flowed.

I am back in business.