The Notebook

I believe in carrying a notebook, no matter how small it is. Growing up, it used to be filled with new words that I came across while reading a book or those I found in advertisements or signboards. Now, apart from the usual ‘Things to do/buy’ lists, I pen down my thoughts, intros lost in confusion and titles of books that will never see the light of day. But a notebook I do carry.

It was a terribly cold day yesterday, one that promised snow, but the snow never came. I was somewhere in Trafalgar Square and desperately needed to get to somewhere warm. And Waterstones by the corner of The Strand and Northumberland Avenue, offered a brief respite. I walked out a few pounds (sterling) lighter and my handbag a lot heavier with three books – one, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. This one book compounded my belief in the importance of the notebook.

Notebooks, no matter brief the scribbles, no matter trivial the contents or illegible the writings, offer glimpses of moments in your life, never to be thrown away or discarded for it will leave you forever. Reading it back will provoke a frown, solicit a chuckle but most likely it will open a floodgate of memories.

Over the years, I have been privileged to share glimpses of jottings in notebooks by people who never thought that one day his or her notebook would be a point of reference.

The late Datin Peggy Taylor with her chest full of history

When Datin Peggy Taylor left, she left a suitcase of history, among them notebooks in various sizes and colours, with anecdotes of her life in Malaya, her friendships with famous names, and jottings of historic moments that we can’t find in history books today. It was in the midst of helping her to type out these jottings from her notebooks that Peggy left us last March and now her voice from the past is coming back to me. It wasn’t easy transcribing Peggy’s writing; but it transported me to her past in India, the voyage on the ship to Malaya, the fun theme parties in her house and the way Tunku did the ronggeng. Afterthoughts were written in slants by the side of the page and towards her last few months, she took to leaving blank pages opposite her jottings, to fill in what she had forgotten. At times, she’d phone me up in the mornings to add in what suddenly came to her during her restless nights.

Almost two years ago, the weather just as bad, I said goodbye to another friend. I had known of his heart condition for some time since I acquired his friendship. When he went, no one knew about the notebook that he left behind. He told me about it because he wanted me to read and see if his jottings would help someone else in his condition. I told his sister about this notebook and she found it among his things that she packed to take home. It was jottings about how he felt during those early days when he was undergoing a heart transplant; his fears and apprehensions, his sorrows all neatly written down while he was in and out of hospital.

During this week alone, I had a chance to glimpse into two people’s pasts – again all written down in notebooks.

Glimpses into our past

During these few months, I have occupied myself with one story, which has now made headlines in the media. It all started with a brother of a plane crash victim who wanted to know more about the incident that happened 58 years ago. It was his initiative that led to the discovery of the plane which crashed in the jungles of Malaya on 25^th August 1950. It was during our second meeting with the brother that I discovered, among the things that were sent back in a box to the parents, was a notebook. It was a blank notebook but it is now being filled in with the journey of the discovery of the plane, by his surviving brother. That will make one fine reading one day.

Yesterday, I saw one notebook with Malay pantuns, penned during the writer’s time as Prisoner of War in Changi. Admittedly, the pantuns and other verses were scribbled in pieces of papers but they were neatly transferred into this notebook, which has been kept since the end of the second world war. It must have been the pantuns and other verses that kept the writer sane during what must have been a torturous and horrendous time in prison. It never ceased to amaze me the almost flawless old Malay that the young MCS officer wrote in his notebook. I had a difficult time trying to explain one naughty verse about heaving bosoms, to his son.

That notebook from a prisoner of war brought me back to the story that I heard at a conference some years back from a scholar who showed me scribblings and jottings from one of the few Malay POW who worked on the Death Railway in Burma. Apparently, the writer scribbled on pieces of papers and hid them in pots and in the ground whenever a Japanese soldier marched by. These jottings were then transferred into notebooks once he made his escape. It was quite a riveting read.

I will continue to carry my notebook around. If anything, it will tell people how much lambchops I bought from our local butcher and what Kissinger and Tabby were up to during the day.

Kak Teh's other notetakings:
History in a suitcase
Goodbye
A painting incomplete
Goodbye, My dear Peggy
A weekend of sorts
Dear Diary

Dear Diary....

I HAVE always been an avid diary keeper. Towards the beginning of the New Year I look forward to a new diary and can't wait to fill it, first with birthdays, anniversaries and then important contact numbers. Then only do I worry about filling it with items relating to work - major appointments, any big projects, deadlines.

But as weeks turn into months, my diary assumes a new image of familiar and organised chaos that only I alone can decipher. Phone numbers written in eyebrow pencils, sometimes in lip liners, find their way among things to do and what to buy, buried in between "terrible headaches" and "late again!"

There's the occasional "$*(*&!!! and a smattering of ????, weighed heavy with implications and emotions. But try reading the jottings a few years later and even the heavily underlined phrases tend to lose some of their intensity with which they were penned.

There are cryptic phrases that read and sound like a dialogue in a Spy vs Spy episode, as well as circles around dates and phone numbers with no names.

I once succumbed to a temporary whim of wanting to be a yuppie even at an age when I was more downwardly pulled than upwardly mobile. I thought I had to be seen carrying this yuppie bible called the filofax.

Soon it was bulging with pages and I was soon presented with an electronic organiser from sympathisers who thought it could help organise my life. That didn't work either, as I am a technically challenged person. I want my diary, one that I can flip through and tear when I want to.

But looking through my now impressive collection of old battered diaries, I wonder if I can make money out of them. People seemed to be making money out of diaries, so why shouldn't I?

I could do well by taking a leaf out of Edwina Currie's published diary of her liaison with former British Prime Minister John Major. Well, I could if I have any liaison worth publishing.

But how does one know when to start jotting the juicy bits and sound bites that will be worth all the risk and bother? Do you start with just the sketches and then expand it later according to how the relationship develops?

But isn't a diary supposed to be so private, so personal that it is only meant for your eyes only? I just wonder that for someone to meticulously jot down every little detail of the former leader's now infamous blue underpants, she must have such vision that the wearer would become a world figure one day. Well, if you have any kind of brush at all with anyone along the corridors of power, it must be worth keeping a diary - just in case.

And, of course, if you think the disgraced British peer and author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, was going to spend his time peeling potatoes in the prison kitchen, think again. Yes, he did do that, only to be able to write first hand what it was like to do things that we mortals do every day in our own kitchen. With every peel that fell to the floor, he knew that the public is hungry to read about what goes on behind the prison walls.

The British public has been treated to serialised extracts of the diaries of many public figures. There's Currie and Archer and of course Princess Diana's Butler. And I don't believe we have seen the last.

It is the age of kiss-and-tell and voyeurism. People want to see what goes on in your private life and nothing is private or sacred anymore. Have you seen the number of hits at the datindiaries blog? I keep going back too, but she is keeping us salivating before she unleashes another sizzling one. Hmm, and there's sarungparty girl's as well, makes my journal jottings as fun as a nun's in a convent.

Anyway, most of us who keep personal letters and diaries and do not want prying eyes do have a problem. What do we do with them if we don't want people pouring over every little detail of our love letters or diaries when we die?

Do we destroy them; burn them so that our children and great grandchildren will never know the deepest secrets that we and our beloved shared in the throes of young love? Or worst still, what if they sell and publish them?

Oftentimes, I read and reread old letters and diaries and store them back carefully under the bed. I still don't have the heart to destroy them. I wonder what other people do with their diaries and old letters? Most probably I'll burn them and store the ashes. Or better still, mix the ashes in water and drink it. But to let other people read them? Never!