me earlier this week when it was sunny in London and I was feeling myself
The longest I have ever kept up a diary was one-and-a-half years. I have reached this milestone twice: once when I was twelve, and then again when I was twenty. I am bringing this newsletter back because I think it is time to start again. And I thought I’d start by reflecting on my past relationships with my diary, life writing, and by extension, my sense of self.
I started my first real diary, documenting ages eleven and twelve, after I read Anne Frank’s diary over the summer. I was so moved by her seriousness, her sense of narrative urgency, and I felt a kinship with her. I started my own diary that very day. Just like her, I addressed it to an imaginary friend. It was a time when I didn’t take myself seriously. I had no real plans. In the first entry, I wrote: “This isn’t a wartime thing or anything. Nobody is trying to kill me. Nothing too interesting. I just want to keep track of my life.”
That’s more or less what I did. I wrote 43,000 words about middle school life, my mom, and the advent of puberty. It was full of details, dialogue, and emotional turmoil. A recurring theme in my narrative was my desire to get my period. I spent long entries pining and speculating about it. On Cinco de Mayo of 2013, after I got cramps but no period, I concluded I was dying of appendicitis and wrote out my will. (“Dresses: for Deepu. Books: for Deepu. My backpack: somebody else named Malavika because it is monogrammed. My piggy bank: Dad. My dresser: ???!”)
Luckily, I survived, and so my will remained unpublished. But by that summer, the record shows I was getting desperate.
June 14 2013: “I wish I was taller. I wish I could have my period. It seems that I’ll never get a dumb period (and believe me, I’ve had my share of false alarms) and I still haven’t cleared the five foot mark. It sounds dumb, but will my friends be “women” in seventh grade???”
(Spoiler alert: I never cleared the five foot mark)
July 4 2013: “Speaking of grown-up maturity, I had another false alarm on periods today. At breakfast, I felt a sticky wetness in my panties. When we got home, I discovered lots of clear discharge, nothing more. I was so bummed I didn’t tell anyone anything about the incident. So the jury’s still out on whether I’ll ever get my periods or not.”
September 11 2013: “I forgot to tell you something extremely major. You already know I’m in a hurry to get those periods; I’ve also been awaiting the milestone that is a bra. I don’t have it just yet, but it’s coming soon. Sometimes when I go to take a shower, I lock the doors, take off my shirt, and just stand there and look at my boobs. I felt a little jolt of pride today when the bumps could be seen in my shadow.”
The day I finally did get my period, something even bigger happened, almost overshadowing it. The metaphor was so good that if I’d written it as fiction, it would’ve seemed heavy-handed. The day of that period, my seventh-grade math teacher was arrested for child pornography and being weird with girls in the class. It was October 1, 2013. “Today,” I wrote somberly, “I have come of age in more ways than one.” Then I plagiarized a quote from the fanciest book I’d read at the time, which was Lord of the Flies: “I weep for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…”
Regarding the actual period, my diary shows a mix of excitement and disillusionment. “Really, on the second day of my period, the fun is somewhat diminishing- walking around feeling like you have ketchup in your underwear really isn’t all too great,” I wrote. “It’s the idea that my body is preparing, that just is so wonderful! I think it’s brilliant!” I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what pornography was. Then I tried to untangle the relationship between periods, sex, and pregnancy. (“I know that people get the urge to reproduce because we’re animals, but I have no idea what that feels like. I wonder if Amma will tell me,” I concluded.)
Anyway. About eight years and a zillion periods later, I rediscovered my old diary in the beginning of the Covid-19 quarantine. I had just come home from college, and I was bouncing off the walls, feeling utterly disinvested from my life. One of my Stanford mentors had advised me to start a pandemic journal, recording everything for future history. As a writer, she told me, now was my time to shine: I had to archive all the details, to search for the metaphor that would make it all make sense. I was getting to live through something. I was so excited. I re-read my entire pre-pubescent diary, which took a while, and felt oddly re-affirmed in my identity. I remembered that this was always who I’d been: an aspiring writer, a loud curious person, a girl who always had an opinion and strung a grand narrative out of everything. I had been here all along.
I kept my diary throughout the entirety of the pandemic, through a gap year in three cities across the country. That diary documents my process of writing All The Yellow Suns, the ups-and-downs of four separate love interests, my process of coming into myself as a real independent adult. I’m so glad I have this record of my coming-of-age years, my plague years, an archive of all the people and places that changed my personality, seemingly on the daily. Keeping a diary alerted me to the magic of everyday life, the narrative tension and sheer excitement of being alive. I had never felt more main character energy. Everything was good for the plot. Everything was worth it.
Then, in July of last year, I had a traumatic experience that shattered the sense of agency I had over my life. I am still dealing with it now. I felt like I’d lost control of the plot, like something vital about myself had slipped through my fingers. One major consequence was that I stopped writing in my pandemic diary. That old ritual, of assigning power and meaning to my life, had started to feel futile. I felt like an era of my life had ended.
I tried starting a new diary for sophomore year of Stanford, but it wasn’t working. Something about trauma is that it alters your sense of memory and time. Days can flutter by without making a real impression. Significant life events flatten onto each other like cards in a deck. You feel like you are stagnating while the rest of the world moves on, like you are not the author of your own fate. I sometimes fear that my sophomore year has been ruined by that trauma, but that is not actually true: I have continued to make friends, fall in love, read and write books, learn more about myself and the world, make mischief and drama, and have lots of fun. I am still a baddie or a menace, depending on who you ask. And if I piece together the events in my head, I see that there is a strong arc of healing. The plot has kept rolling. I’m still out here.
I figured I would go back to writing my diary once I am completely healed. But I have come to realize that healing is not linear, so there’s no point in waiting around. I also suspect I might have the power to write my healing into existence, if I try. In times of confusion in my life, I have often opened a Google Doc and typed aimlessly until my true self finally appeared on the page: the version of me that is articulate, confident, always full of answers. Through writing, I want to celebrate my wins and put the L’s in context. I hope that by returning to writing about my life, I can also return to myself, and remember that my life is interesting and fun, so wack and full.
So, yeah. I’m bringing this newsletter back so that I can write for my community again. That community is queer girls, girls of color, and survivors: everyone else is just a guest. I want this to feel low-stakes and authentic, if that is even possible on this ever-accelerating internet. I’m calling this project Diary of a Wimpy Mal in honor of the series I loved as a kid, and also because I am sentimental, wimpy, and weak. I will be writing about books I read; experiences I have; thoughts that cross my mind. Thank you so much for being here <3
Congratulations on finding the strength to return!! I wish you all the best for the future, looking forward to this gem! I absolutely adore your writing style and I appreciate how you share your vulnerability with us🧡 (also your title made me laugh out loud because there‘s really someone out there with the same....brain and thought process as me lmao)
hi from another brown girl in canada, thank you for sharing with us ! i read this entry on my commute home and it made my day so much better. looking forward for the rest <3