Srinagar, May 3 -- I stood in a dusty classroom, flipping through a teacher's diary that felt more like a checklist than a tool. As an academic monitor in remote Jammu and Kashmir, I'd seen this before. Diaries once meant to reflect a teacher's heart and hustle now reduced to bureaucratic formality. It hit me hard: we were letting something vital slip away.

When I began teaching, I carried a worn notebook. It wasn't just lesson plans. It was a record of my students' lives. Their strengths, struggles, and even their parents' numbers lived in those pages. One evening, a parent stopped me on the road: "How's my daughter doing?" I opened my diary, found her name, and read notes on her shy but steady progress. He smiled, kissed my forehead. I...