New Delhi, Jan. 3 -- At the end of every year my mother had a little ritual.

She would say, "Well it looks like I survived another year. So can you buy me a diary for next year?"

As she got more housebound with age, she would say, "Don't get one of those big expensive diaries. Get a small one. Not enough happens anymore in my life to fill a whole page."

But she filled it anyway, painstakingly listing every phone call she had received that day and every phone call she had made. If the cook called in sick, that was recorded as well alongside menus for birthday dinners and the like. At the beginning of every month she noted all the birthdays of various relatives and friends that month, a list that steadily shrank over the years.

One of m...