A Diarist Par-Excellence - Ajoyanand Bora

Dear friends let me have the honor of introducing you to Ajayananda Borah an extremely interesting person and in his own words 'a wannabe record breaker who seeks entry into Limca Book Of Records by penning his thoughts since 1961 till date without a single day's break.'Mr.Borah has been visiting our dental clinic for the last many years and in spite of various chit-chats between us ,this interesting side of him was not known to us.In the first week of Feb he invited us to attend his Golden celebration of continuous diary writing (1961-2010) at Guwahati press club.This Thursday evening me and my husband visited his place .Here is a personal account of the things we talked about.

Here in the above picture you see the man himself.Below is the picture of his diaries 50 in number all labelled year wise.

When he first jotted down his thoughts in a personal diary as a schoolboy,he had no idea that his new hobby would become an abiding passion.'My diary is entirely personal,i do not claim it to be a detailed record of contemporary events,but definitely is a non stop journey of half a century i.e.1961-2010'.He is legitimately seeking a place in the Limca book of records and if his feat is recognised,Borah' will edge out present record holder Chandulall Chowdhury of Mumbai who wrote diaries from 1965 only.Mr. Borah's personal notes run into 17,900 pages and more till this date.We had the pleasure of peeping through all of his diaries with his due permission as he believes that now his diaries don't belong to him alone.For my blogger friends i clicked this picture where the very first and the latest page of his diary are shown together.

He was born in the year 1943 at Biswanath Gymnkhana European Club near Pabhoi tea estate in Assam,India.In 1964 after his graduation he started his career as a high school teacher and later on joined All India Radio Dibrugarh as Programme Announcer since its inception in1969,after 35 yrs of service retired in 2003.He has produced a number of Radio plays and dramatized multi serial episode serial novels .His very popular radio programme 'DAK PAKHILI' is still remembered by the listeners where he used to reply listener's letters.

Though he developed the habit of writing in 1954 when he just got admitted in high school,he had no records of initial years ,because most of the jottings were on loose papers.He started maintaining hard bound diaries since 1961 in Darrang college where in influenced by Principal Bipinpal Das and Dr. Amalendu Guha ."I was not directly influenced by anybody but indirectly inspired by my high school teachers like BirenKakoty,KeshabMahanta and many more."

Running my fingers through the pages of his diaries was amazing ....he read out to us many interesting incidents from his diary...his wedding day,the cost of the gold at that time of the year(1978...gold was rs 880/10 gm),annual expenditure of the year 1963 was Rs 308,he bought cloth for his trouser at rs 3/ ,Petrol per Lt cost RS 1.60 in the year 1973.Apart from keeping record of national,international and local important current events he kept record of the climatic conditions too.Events of Burning Assam Agitation are all portrayed very vividly in his diaries.
His day always starts at 5 am and he always carries a piece of white paper and a pen so that he can note down important things and at the bed time he finally records them in his diary.He maintains an Index Volume of diaries for easy reference -like he showed us the day when he for the very first time visited our dental clinic.Borah's record has been entered in Asomiya Book Of Records edited by Santanu Kausik Baruah 1st edition2006(see the page in the picture above).
Here is a picture of the letter written by the people of Gupta Diary of Kolkatta...he has been writing on the diaries sold by this company since the very beginning.He has submitted adequate documentations to the Limca book of records and is awaiting their response.World record of writing diaries is held by Col.Ernst Loftus of Zimbabwe,who wrote diaries for 91 yrs and died at the age of 103 yrs in 1987.Asked him if he has a similar target,Mr.Borah quipped....."it is simply impossible,i am already 67,let me see how long i can continue,i will go on writing till the last day of my life.He is trying to contact Guinness Book(International British Ed)to ascertain whether his feat of 50 yrs of continuous diary writing has any parallel in this particular discipline.
His wife Mrs Bella is a very sweet and soft spoken lady,they have two kids ,one medico son Abhinandan and a daughter Monmayuri ,both of them presently residing at Delhi.He tells me that inspired by him his daughter too has been maintaining a diary for the 10 yrs while one of his sister wrote diaries for almost 20 yrs .I asked Mrs Bella if she too maintains a diary to which she replied that each year since they are married he has been gifting her a diary but most of them are blank....we all broke into a laughter hearing that.We were treated grandly by many snacks , savouries and tea and later he showed us his large collection of music cds and movies dvds,a large number of different styled set of playing cards,his badminton racket .Over all it was an evening that would be etched in our memories for ever.I came back highly inspired and motivated ...i hope to be more regular in updating my blog .