A private diary is often said to yield a harvest of surprises. But this one, on the contrary, offers nothing of the sort. In retrospect, it only reasserts the man we knew later as Holenarasipur Yoganarasimham Sharada Prasad. There is a precocious craving in this diary to scale the heights of human perfection and there is ample confirmation that the seeds for such an evolution were well in place. It is written in the historical backdrop of the Quit India movement, but yet does not hasten to assign itself history. The same exemplary humility we find in the later writings of the man, where, despite being a proximate witness to extraordinary happenings chose to remain its quiet conscionable judge. This is not an archetypal diary and therefore the surprises you encounter here are of an entirely different nature. It is in young Sharada Prasad's intense scrutiny of the self; in his intellectual preparation; his equanimity, sensitivity and his moral assessments; in his clarity of thought and confidence; in his dispassion and pragmatism that you encounter a series of stunning surprises.