An old bus ticket, a bill from a family dinner, maybe the wrapper from a chocolate you shared with your sweetheart or the label from a pretty dress you bought – these scraps that accumulate in the gaps between sofa cushions, or are brushed under the bed or stashed in cluttered drawers, have the potential to be more than just junk. Having first encountered it through social media videos, enthusiasts in the city are practising ‘junk journalling’, transforming their trash into treasure. “I was seeing a lot of my friends do it after seeing it on social media, and wanted to try it out in my own style,” says Nandita Govindarajan, an undergraduate student, explaining, “It’s a form of journalling that uses any material that we would otherwise discard. For example, if I have an empty packet of something I ate, I like to add it to my journal.”
Like Govindarajan, for some enthusiasts, junk journalling is a more ‘real’ way of documenting their lives than digital photographs that get lost in a sea of others. As Tanya Shanker, a young musician, explains, these memories can just be mundane activities. “It doesn’t have to be a super big event in your life but just you going for a walk in the park and wanting to document and romanticise the small moments and making them seem bigger – it helps me appreciate every day,” she says. For others, it’s also a way to wind down from their busy lives. As Sachi Lakhotia, a small business owner, explains, “There are no restrictions – you don’t have to think too much, you can just be creative with everything from bus and metro tickets to colourful papers around the house; it helps me calm down.”
While this may sound similar to scrapbooking, most junk journallers insist on a key difference: not focusing on perfection. “With scrapbooking, there’s more of a need to be cute and pretty. But this is more about the journey: you collect some memories and follow your heart to create something that doesn’t have to be perfect,” explains Parvathy Ramlal, who has an art and craft YouTube channel. Cautioning beginners from getting caught up in the elaborate spreads and expensive materials on social media, she adds, “If you have a notebook and a pen, and are somewhere outdoors, you can collect leaves or flowers, and start journalling. You don’t need fancy stationery or washi tapes.”
Some have pushed the boundaries of junk journalling, choosing to build stories through it, like Aishwarya Bhatkal, an illustrator. “I thought it would be interesting to tell the story of an apothecary witch – how she would write in a journal, and what she would put. She makes potions, travels to different places on her broom, journals about her recipes, and has some very secret ‘corners’ in her book that can only be accessed by magic,” she says, adding, “You can tell very specific stories with this form that you can’t do with just writing, illustration, or poetry because here, you’re putting everything in one.”