KARACHI: Who, in this fast age of computers, laptops, tablets and digital diaries, takes out the time to make diary entries to preserve each day’s happenings in the form of written memories? Your guess is as good as mine and yet the end of the year is marked by book and stationery shops stocking up on diaries of all sizes and prices.

“Well, some 10 per cent of people still enjoy writing in and maintaining diaries. The rest only buy them to gift to others. Companies and businesses do it to maintain prestige among their clients and friends after having their company name screen-printed on the diary, of course. Some get them custom-made to promote their message or image.

And if the receivers of these gifts don’t pass them on to someone else, who may find some use for them, most eventually end up as the dhobi ki diary in the hands of a housewife who needs to keep a record of the clothes she sends out to the laundry every week,” says Bhai Abu Bakr at Yasir Traders near Denso Hall.

Apart from selling diaries, the bookshop also has calendars and planners for the coming year. Many of these have blank spaces. “That’s for us to screen-print any company name. We charge around Rs500 for printing on 100 copies,” he says. “The diaries, priced from Rs130 to Rs3,500, are obviously far more expensive than the calendars or planners, which you can buy for Rs20 to Rs70 and around Rs180 to Rs350 apiece, so big companies distribute the diaries while small shop owners or businesses buy new year calendars in bulk to give them away to their clients after having their business logos or names printed on them.”

There are desk calendars and the hanging ones with picturesque scenes, art or calligraphy accompanying the dates on the side or underneath.

Mohammad Yousuf of Olympia Copy House in Urdu Bazaar says the ones with calligraphy are more popular. “We start stocking the ones for the coming year from around Oct 15 onwards. And they sell till the end of February,” he says about the calendars.

About the diaries, he says most of them are published and bound in Lahore. “The cheaper diaries ranging from Rs130 to Rs200 or so have cheap 70-gram paper and the expensive ones costing thousands have 100-gram paper. The paper in the expensive diaries and calendars and planners as well is usually imported from Indonesia while the ones with local paper are quite inexpensive and sold on vendor carts mostly,” he says.

Some diaries are also leather-bound but those have a refill option for the pages. The rest are all bound in artificial leather, or Rexine, as it is known.

“Black colour is considered rich and is the most popular among diaries, followed by maroon, dark green and midnight blue. People also prefer a clasp or loop on the cover to secure the contents. Today’s diaries also aren’t just a set of pages with dates and area telephone codes, etc, bound in artificial leather,” Abdul Karim of Super Popular Copy House, also situated in Urdu Bazaar, says before opening a diary with a watch, calculator and pen included.

Whatever use left for it there is still something about a new diary with crisp fragrant pages and ribbons for bookmarks that beckons one into wanting to own it. Yes, even in this day and age!

Published in Dawn December 7th , 2014