Diary of a queer brown millennial from South India

Dear Diary,

What do I confess to you? Whose style shall I imitate – Ginger Foutley or Anne Frank? Has a 12-year-old from India ever maintained a diary before? Why have I never heard of one?

Anyhow, tomorrow I am off to Veega Land along with the kids of a school that my uncle runs in Kerala. I shall carry a book with me because I don’t expect to get along with anybody on the shuttle bus. We won’t know any antakshari songs in common anyway either.

I will henceforth be writing in you every Thursday. I must I MUST I must!

Love,

Rebel Rosa.

Dear Diary,

Why do I not have any friends? Nobody wants to keep in touch with me and mom won’t stop trying to get me to go ‘play in the park’ the way she did as a kid.

Anyway, I like this new boy. He’s in my art class at school – they have regular art classes in the new school here. He’s got the cutest smile, but the only time he noticed me was when one of my incisors fell out unceremoniously in the middle of art class last week (well, I was absent-mindedly rattling it with my tongue, oops!) and I bled into my handkerchief. Apparently, it's not uncommon for milk teeth to fall out well into your teens.

Love,

Rosa.

Dear Diary,

I haven’t written in you in a long time. Where do I begin? I don’t even recognize the person I have become. Everything has changed.

Somebody was killed in our neighbourhood last week! Another of our neighbours had gone to their house to pluck flowers and found the body… she had been stabbed in the stomach. Apparently, she was killed by her dead husband’s children from his first marriage. I hope their marriage was worth getting murdered over.

Dear Diary,

I am a college dropout! I know I haven’t written to you in years, but today I finally found the time to rummage through my cupboard and set it straight. And you toppled out and I have written such boring entries in you thus far – my life has finally gotten interesting! I dropped out of college, how dramatic is that!

I told my parents that both Steve Jobs and Bill had not finished college. They told me that it was because they were boy geniuses! Hmm, maybe I’m a girl genius? Like I know it’s usually the boys who are smart – Dexter, Jimmy Neutron, Johnny Quest, but I don’t know, maybe I’m gonna break the pattern here. Shakuntala Devi was an arithmetic genius and she’s a woman. Did she go to college and solve mental math puzzles all day?

Anyhow, I cannot stand college! Everybody is always talking to each other, and they treat me like an oddity. I need to move out of this city.

Dear Diary,

I have not written a single entry in three and a half years! What to do – I have to leave you at my parent’s house where I have storage space. I wonder if amma has read you. She always wants to know my secrets – I like having them, they are the only things that are truly mine.

Anyhow, since the last time I wrote in you, I transferred to another college in a bigger city and got my first job, which I have now quit. Life is so hard and I am among those who have it easy! I don’t know what I believe in anymore. I have a little money saved up. Should I just start something of my own?

Anyhow, now that I am back home, maybe I can get my driver’s licence.

Dear Diary,

I got my driver’s licence! And I’m taking a trip to Mysore. I need to get away for a while. My mom is driving me straight up the wall. I don’t know what to do – P.S. I might be in love. I have never felt this way about anyone before.

Dear Diary,

What’s up? How have you been? I have never asked you about yourself. I feel like I never do that with anybody. Is that why everybody hates me? I don’t know what love is. I don’t understand how my friends decided that they want to be in a relationship.

When I was younger, I would read my mother’s collection of old Archie’s comics. They are mostly from the 1980s. In those stories, it seemed like everybody would go on dates every weekend. I remember asking my mom what dates meant. I thinks she said it was when two people wanted to go out and have a meal together, and just talk and maybe kiss. Then, I vividly remember asking her: what happens after they have gone on enough dates?

She said: “In their culture it doesn’t stop. Even married women go on dates.”

Well diary, what a load of bullshit. Apparently, people go on dates, have entire relationships during the course of which they talk about their emotions and feelings and mundane aspects of their day. I don’t know how to do any of that!

Anyhow, I read a quote that said, smart people talk about ideas. I’d like to talk about some ideas! But nobody I know in real life has read Alexis de Tocqueville's critique of the American democracy!! College was such a snoozefest even in the big city. Everybody only wanted to go to the gym and get abs and have a beach-house party for their 19^th birthday. Even at work, everybody just wants to talk about…well, I don’t know what anybody ever talks about. I’m either not paying attention or maybe they aren’t talking around me.

Dear Diary,

Today I discovered Brene Brown. She says that shame is a major issue that holds most people back, and that one must be bold enough to be vulnerable with others. We are humans after all. Apparently, everybody has been in love just like me. But have they really? Could they finish each other’s sentences?

Dear Diary,

I think I need to move out of this small city – only my parents could live here. Nobody takes me seriously. There are kids who just do heroin and play video games over the weekend. They aren’t even kids but like 30 years old? I can’t die in this dead-end corner of the world.

I’m so confused. I thought I had all the answers.

You're my only true friend, diary.

Love,

Rosa.

Dear Diary,

I think a girl fell in love with me. She said I have the prettiest eyes and that she loves my curls. That’s great, but I don’t have time to think about all this. I can’t keep falling in love because if I ever wanted to own a decent house in Delhi or Chennai, then I’ll need at least a crore of rupees. That’s quarter a million dollars, you know? Only Britney Spears has that kind of money, so I better work bitch!

Ok gotta run!

Rosa.

Dear Diary,

Even Akanksha has a boyfriend now. They are apparently in love and think they may end up getting married in the long run. Where are all the people in the world who don’t want to get married? I mean, we need to get better women’s representation in the Parliament, climate change is coming, and my one true love won’t admit to himself that he loves me.

I think I am the most misunderstood person in the whole universe. It’s like the guy who wrote Moby Dick – apparently the book got famous much after his death. Like that, once I am gone without a trace, people will appreciate me perhaps. They will admit that I made brave decisions. That I did not settle.

Dear Diary,

Today, I was told by my mentor that my worldview is warped. It doesn’t match reality. She said I should meet a therapist. How am I the problem here? I really thought there was more to the world. It’s all the same everywhere.

Dear Diary,

I went for my first pride march today. Everybody should have the right to marry whomever they want to marry. I don’t think homosexuality is just about sex, as mom once said. Falling in love is a deep, moving experience. To relate to one another, to open up and have intimate conversations, to have someone witness your life by your side – that’s also there to a relationship. But I don’t know why anybody wants to marry - weddings are tedious and expensive!

Dear Diary,

Rishabh cheated on me. I don’t know, can I say ‘cheated’? I never considered us to be a thing anyway. Funny thing is he cheated on me with Parul. I clearly remember asking Parul if she thought he was cute for herself. She swore he wasn’t her type. Well, whatever. I never felt a thing for him.

I have a month of travelling to look forward to. I am going to the beach for a short vacation! Those two can live their boring lives in the company of one another.

Dear Diary,

Today I was sitting here, getting high on Mary Jane, and guess what? I think I am bisexual! Do I have to come out now? I think I have always been bisexual – everybody just kept talking all over my thoughts and emotions, never allowing me to think for myself even for a moment. Plus it’s only the boys who ever pursue me – they keep getting in my way with all their boy drama.

I mean, I did truly love my first love, but I gotta admit that boys are a lot of drama. Got to deal with their male ego. But women are ALSO drama – have you met my mom??