A Documentation Tale

I always had a good collection of notebooks. Some were the larger ones for recreating my father’s serious-looking law-bookshelf in my "Disney" room; some were bulky ones for imitating my mother’s PhD drafts, some were bright, shiny ones that actually looked more relevant with my high school backpack; and a few Hogwarts-inspired ones for my secret words—my bookshelf truly had an apple pie order. And they still have their reign, but that’s in a secret dungeon, in my childhood storage box. Their words are now more like crayon marks. The school games and the dreamy art ones get into the "absolutely wide smile" folder. And the "crush" notes tempt me to tear them off, although they stick there with the fictional characters’ magazine cutouts. (I do simper looking at the anticipated similarities.)

After getting the smart phone and the laptop, my system is a little like a two-lane highway. I have notebooks, but those are handpicked and a little less busy. I write on them either to maintain my handwriting flow or when the digital ones crave for their charging attention. Simply put, the new fast lane is busier.

But why am I jotting down all these?  This has another sibling question rushing in: What have I been doing all these months on the web?

And another one from my "well-wishers": "Why am I screaming out about my emotions on the web?"

Since my childhood, I have been jotting everything down to make my stuff look more "human". All these months, I have been doing this to document my weeks on the web. I wanted to share my own "accepted" feelings with the readers to get a belonging nook.

My well-wishers’ question has a thorny answer: I choose honesty. If I wrote anything "scripted" about my emotions, it would be hard for the readers to gauge its integrity, and I could pass their judgement. But wouldn’t I know it’s every single layer? And that could ruin my entire existence. I didn't want to be counted as a fictional dupe.

Just tell me one thing, what do you think about documentation? Don’t get into the data, government, or health stuff. Think about only 2023 of your life. We are in week 16 of this year, and fortunately, much of our memory has not been screwed yet. Well, it may or may not be easy for some of our idle brains to dig out everything, but our overhyped devices can probably connect the wires. Photos, notes, messages, social media, emails every folder can give the history of what you have done in these 3 and a half months, even if you have deleted some crap details. That’s their job, and see how crude and famous spy kind they look. We have our own private investigators checking on us every second.

But it’s details too much like an misunderstood javascript if we don’t polish that up with our emotions.

In a recent podcast of “No Backup Plan” famous singer Carla Morrison said, “I almost feel like I have this opportunity to be this open for people to see it so they can open up…I feel like we all are very disconnected from our emotions. And I feel we come to this world to feel so many things that help us learn who we are and what direction we’re going to. What we’re providing for our journey.“

The digital world is quite capable of wooing us with every possible new glittery glare. But every single trending piece somehow has the same steps, the same aesthetic, and the same expression. The past of every participant probably looks like a copy and paste of some forgotten original. Unfortunately, we even don’t realise that we are running after some numbers, which makes us a regular dupe of some other runners. And that clumsiness is not much different from the identity card kind of documentation. For example, if you post your laughing face, it should not only show the way you laughed. It should have the story about why you laughed. The story and the emotion behind that non-fictionalised laugh make it exclusive. Your documentation should have your emotions tucked in.

It’s my 50th attempt to tuck my emotions on the web. Thank you so much for letting me do this. Thank you so much for your unconditional support and good wishes. Your personal messages and public comments make me tear up. My last 50 weeks have shown that it’s so easy to connect only on the basis of shared emotions, even if we don’t know each other personally. It’s the power of documentation and true emotion. I call it Ina*.

If the world’s watching us, then it should see the “human”us.

(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)