A Small Diary

I have always been good at counting my failures.

I write them down carefully, one after another, in my small blue diary, the one with a broken spine and pages that smell faintly of dust and sweat. I keep it hidden inside my schoolbag, tucked beneath old notebooks and a torn geometry box, because if anyone ever read it, I think I would disappear out of shame.

I am from a small village in India, where mornings begin with the sound of temple bells and ends with people returning home from fields. The houses here are close to each other, painted in tired colors, and everyone seems to know everything about everyone.

I am eight or maybe nine. I stopped keeping track after last year, when the boys at school decided that I was an easy target. They laughed at the way I spoke, at how thin my arms were, at how I ran slower than them. They called me names I still don’t understand, but I know they are not kind because they make my chest feel heavy. Sometimes they pushed me. Sometimes they just looked at me and laughed, which hurt more.

Every evening, after school, I tell my parents that I am going to play. I put a stiff and plastic smile that I have practiced in front of the mirror. My mother nods while stirring the curry, my father pretends to listen as he reads the newspaper. They believe me. Or maybe they choose to.

Instead of playing, I go to the woods.

The woods begin just beyond the last hut of the village, where the ground turns uneven and the trees grow close enough to whisper to each other. I sit on a flat rock near a banyan tree whose roots hang like old ropes. That is where I open my diary.

Today they locked me inside the classroom.

Today the teacher didn’t notice.

Today I tried to speak but my voice didn’t come out.

Sometimes my tears fall onto the page and blur the ink. I don’t wipe them away. It feels right to let the words bleed.

When I am done crying, I close the diary, wipe my face with my sleeve, and practice my smile again before walking back home. By the time I reach the village, I look like a normal boy. A boy who belongs.

But one day, the diary page filled too quickly. That day, they didn’t just laugh. They took my bag and threw it into the mud. My diary almost fell out. When I saw that, something inside me cracked open.

That evening, I didn’t stop at the banyan tree.

I kept walking in a land far, far away.

Deeper and deeper into the woods, where the light struggled to touch the ground and the air smelled of wet leaves and secrets. My heart beat fast, but I didn’t turn back. I was running away. I told myself I would never return. I didn’t know where I would go, only that I could not stay.

After what felt like hours, I saw an isolated hut stood between the trees. It was small and old, its walls darkened by time. Inside, a lamp was lit. Its warm yellow glow spilled softly through the window, cutting through the green darkness.

I felt drawn to it. Quietly, I walked closer and peeked inside through the dusty glass. The room was empty. Just a low wooden table, a mat on the floor, and shadows dancing on the walls from the flickering flame.

I turned to leave. And then I felt someone standing behind me. My breath caught in my throat. My heart nearly burst out of my chest as I spun around.

An old lady stood there, so close I could smell incense and something earthy, like rain-soaked soil. Her face was full of deep wrinkles, her eyes sharp but calm. She wore a white sari that glowed faintly in the lamplight,.

She looked down at me.

And smiled.

She looked at me for a long moment, as if she had been waiting for me from forever.

“What are you doing so deep in the forest, child?” she asked. Her voice was soft, not sharp like the teachers’, not mocking like the boys’. It sounded so warm and welcoming that I got tears in my eyes.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag. The diary was inside it, pressing against my back like a secret heartbeat. I had never told anyone. Not my parents. Not even the trees. The words felt too heavy to carry out into the open.

“I was just walking,” I said finally.

The lamp behind her threw a gentle glow onto her face, softening the deep lines of her wrinkles. In that light, she did not look frightening anymore. She looked patient. As if time itself had slowed down around her, as if she had nowhere else to be.

A strange thought crossed my mind then, she will never come to my village. She belonged to the forest, not to gossip or questions. Whatever I said here would stay here. Safe among the trees.

I swallowed.

“They don’t like me,” I said, staring at the ground. “The other children. I try to be quiet, but that makes them angrier. I try to speak, but they laugh.”

Once the first words escaped, the rest followed like water breaking through a cracked wall. I told her about school. About the pushing. About the laughter. About my diary. I even took it out and showed her the smudged pages, my failures written in uneven handwriting.

She listened.

She did not interrupt. She did not sigh. She did not tell me to be strong or brave or to ignore them. She simply listened, when I spoke, when I cried, even when I stopped talking and just breathed.

By the time my chest felt empty, the forest had begun to change. The light thinned, shadows stretching longer between the trees. Somewhere, an insect began its evening song.

“It is getting dark,” she said gently. “You should go home now.”

Panic rose in me. “I don’t want to,” I blurted out. “I don’t want to go back.”

She looked at me, really looked at me, and then nodded. “You will go today,” she said. “But you may come back tomorrow. And the day after that.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“Because I can help you,” she said simply. “And because I am old, and I need help too.”

She told me I could come every evening after school. She would listen. She would teach me things. In return, I would help her with basic chores: fetching water, sweeping the hut, gathering firewood.

It did not sound like a bargain. It sounded like belonging.

As I walked back toward the village that night, the forest no longer felt like it was closing in on me. My bag felt lighter. The diary was still there, but it didn’t press so hard.

When I reached home, I wore my plastic smile again.

But this time, it was not that plasticky.

The next day, I visited again in the evening.

She was crouched near the doorway cleaning her patio with a broom. Without being told, I took the broom from her and cleaned the patio. I picked up the bucket and walked to the stream. The water was cold and bit into my skin, but I didn’t mind. I gathered firewood, and arranged it the way similar to she was keeping the earlier stack, thick pieces below, thin ones on top.

She watched me in silence.

When I finished, I dusted my hands on my shorts and slung my bag over my shoulder. The light was fading. It was time to go.

“Wait,” she said.

I stopped.

She pointed at my bag. “Your diary.”

I hesitated, then took it out.

“Today,” she said, “you will not write your today’s failures.”

I frowned. “Then what would I write?”

She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes steady and deep. “Write one wish.”

My chest tightened. “I don’t have wishes,” I said quickly. “Only things that go wrong.”

She shook her head. “That is not true. You have just never asked.”

I sat on the floor, cross-legged, the diary open on my lap. The page stared back at me, clean, empty, almost accusing. My hand hovered above it. I didn’t know where to begin. Wishes felt dangerous. They could be laughed at. They could fail.

“What if it doesn’t come true?” I asked.

She lit the lamp and placed it beside me. The flame flickered softly. “A wish is not a promise,” she said. “It is a direction.”

My fingers trembled as I finally pressed the pen to paper.

I thought of school. Of the boys. Of my voice disappearing in my throat. Of how small I felt in rooms full of people.

Slowly, carefully, I wrote:

I wish to stop being afraid when I open my mouth.

I read it again. The words scared me, but they also felt warm.

She leaned over my shoulder and read it too. She did not smile. She did not nod.

Instead, she closed the diary gently.

Days turned into each other.

I kept coming.

I did the chores the same way quietly, carefully: fetching water, sweeping the hut, stacking firewood. Every evening, before leaving, she would gesture toward my bag. I would take out the diary. I would write a wish.

Nothing happened.

The boys at school were still there. Their laughter still followed me down the corridor like loose stones thrown at my back. My mouth still dried up when the teacher asked a question. My name still sounded strange and distant when spoken aloud.

The diary began to change.

The handwriting grew tighter, sharper.

I wish they would stop.

A few days later. I wish one day could pass without laughter.

Then, written harder, the pen nearly tearing the page, I wish this would work.

Each evening, she watched me write. She never corrected the words. Never told me to be patient. Never said soon.

The forest stayed the same. The hut stayed the same. She stayed the same.

One evening, my hands shook as I carried the water bucket back. A little spilled over the rim and soaked my shirt. I didn’t slow down to stop it.

Inside the hut, I swept quickly, roughly. Dust rose and settled everywhere except where I wanted it to go.

“That is enough,” she said.

I froze. It was the first time she had stopped me.

I straightened up, breathing hard. “Why isn’t anything changing?” The question came out before I could swallow it back.

She didn’t answer.

“I do everything,” I said. “I come every day. I write the wishes. I help you. You said—”

My voice cracked. I hated that it did.

“You said you could help.”

She looked at the lamp, not at me. The flame trembled slightly.

“I said you could come,” she replied.

That was worse.

I pulled the diary out and opened it to the last page. “Look,” I said, thrusting it toward her. “I’ve written so many. None of them came true.”

She glanced at the page. Only glanced.

“Then write another,” she said.

Something snapped.

I sat down hard on the floor and pressed the pen to the paper. My hand moved fast, angry, careless.

I wish this was not a lie.

The words looked ugly. Crooked. Real.

I shut the diary and stood up. “I’m going home,” I said.

She nodded, as if she had expected this moment all along.

That night, under the banyan tree, I opened the diary again. For the first time since I had found the hut, I didn’t know what to write.

The page stayed blank.

The next day, I still went to the forest. Out of habit, maybe.

I did the chores. I didn’t open the diary.

She noticed.

“You didn’t write,” she said.

“I don’t have any wishes left,” I replied.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then she reached for the diary herself.

She opened it slowly, turning the pages I knew by heart. When she reached the blank one, she stopped.

“This page,” she said softly, “is finally honest.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

She closed the diary and handed it back to me. Her fingers brushed mine. They were colder than usual. She watched me for a long moment after saying it.

“You have been writing what you want to escape,” she said.

I waited. Something in her voice told me not to interrupt.

“You want to escape the boys,” she continued. “If they vanish, you will escape fear. If fear vanishes, you will escape silence. If silence vanishes, something else will take its place.”

I frowned. “What else?”

She looked at me then, really looked at me.

“Something you haven’t met yet,” she said. “But you will want to escape it too.”

The words settled slowly. I thought of the diary. Page after page of running away: running from laughter, from pain, from being seen.

“If I escape this,” I said quietly, “there will be another thing.”

She nodded. “There always is.”

My chest tightened. Not with fear this time, but recognition. I wasn’t asking for change. I was asking for relief. Temporary. Conditional. Always dependent on something outside me disappearing.

“So what should I have written?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

I looked up, startled.

The hut was very quiet now. Even the forest seemed to lean in.

“You cannot spend your life escaping what hurts,” she went on. “You will run out of places. Or you will run out of yourself.”

The words struck somewhere deep, somewhere old. I saw it suddenly that years stretching forward, different rooms, different faces, the same tightening in my chest. Different diaries. Same wishes.

“I wasn’t changing anything,” I whispered. “I was just postponing it.”

“Yes,” she said.

I closed my eyes. It was so comforting. The realization hit, not like comfort, not like hope but like the ground finally holding firm under my feet. I had been practicing how to leave, not how to stay.

I opened my eyes to speak again.

But there was no lamp light.

No walls.

No hut.

The forest stood open around me, unchanged. The air was cool. The banyan roots swayed gently. I was standing exactly where I had always been.

Alone.

The diary was still in my hands.

The old woman was gone.

I turned in a slow circle, heart pounding, but there was nothing, no doorway, no footprints, no sign that the hut had ever existed.

Only the woods. Only me.

And for the first time, I did not feel the urge to write anything down.