Sheena Bora’s diary reveals troubled relationship with parents

Sheena Bora, the Mumbai girl allegedly murdered by her own mother, was a troubled teenager and fought for acceptance and love and care of her parents. The diary entries Sheena made as a young girl in Guwahati first expresses her love for Indrani, and then later in life, her hate for her mother.

In her diaries, accessed by dna, Sheena jotted down study notes, slam notes from friends, phone numbers and letters to her father. It is apparent that she was sad about not being around her biological father Siddhartha Das and repeatedly urged him to come and visit her. This is contrary to what Siddhartha Das told the media about his correspondence with Sheena Bora being barely in touch with him.

In fact, in one of her earlier entries, she writes that she is angry with him. “Daddy, I am very angry with you. O.k. I didn’t get any time to write any letter to you but you should have written to me. Very mean ha! Well, even I am sorry for not writing any letter to you. In Class X, we have to work very hard. In the morning at 7.30. We have to go to school and again I have to attend my maths coaching class 3 O’clock to 4.30 pm and again from 6 O’clock to 8 O’clock my science coaching class. I reach home at about 8.30 pm. Hope you can imagine how hard I’m working.”

Sheena started writing her diary sometime in 2003, when she was in standard X. Her letters to her father reflects that she had great expectations from him. It seems that she first drafted letters to her father in diary and then posted them to him.

She writes: “Daddy, I’ve cut my nails and I haven’t grown them long. I’m following your advice – first studies then style. I know you have a lot to tell me but daddy don’t write anything in any of your letter. I hope you’ll come once before my HSLC exams. Why don’t you make a trip to Guwahati in December. Then you can tell me everything you wanted me to know.”

In another ‘draft’ letter, Sheena enquires from Sidharth which caste she belongs to! “Daddy actually I’m facing a problem. For my HSLC, I’m to fill up some forms and there we are to write to which caste we belong. Daddy, I’m really very confused for I am not sure about my caste. We have got the options – Schedule/OBC/…,” she writes.

In another entry, from the time when she had just appeared for her pre-boards, usually held by the school, she writes that she was sick and could not study much, and that she scored 84%. She even kind of scolded her father for depending on her maternal uncles. She pleaded that he should not start a new venture with two of her mamas, because one of them is looking for a job and will jump the gun the moment he lands a good one. “Don’t you have the capability of starting something from (sic) your own instead of depending upon others,” she asks. She further asks him to give up the job at HITACHI KK and look for a better one.

But then, in the same letter to her father, she turns sheepish. “Oh! It seems as if I am trying to guide you,” she writes.

Sheena then asked him to try and get a certificate, “because this certificate could provide me with scholarships for my further studies,” she writes. She tells him that there are lot of expenses, and that he should do this for her future. The diary entry is marked June 28, 29 and 30.

Given the contents of the letters to her father, it seems that she was in touch with Siddharth Das. An old classmate of Sheena, who now lives in North India, corroborated the same. “I met him in Sheena’s house in 2001, when we were in the eighth standard. She introduced him to me as her father,” said the friend.

In one of her later entries, which looks like it was written when she was studying for the board exams in the tenth standard, after her pre-board exams, she said that she does not know how to look for envelopes, and so has been unable to send letters. In the entry, in which she looks like she is unhappy with her grandparent’s attitude towards Siddharth, she tells him that she wants to talk with Siddharth but cannot ring him up. “They say you are no good, and they don’t like you. But my conscience does not allow me to believe them,” she wrote.

She goes on to say that she does not know much about her mother. She writes that she doesn’t know whether her mother remembers her or not, but because Indrani is her mother, she “is I the corner of my heart,” she writes. It must be added here that Sheena also kept clippings of news reports of her mother. News reports of INX media launching new channels, of Indrani being considered WSJ’s most powerful women with Indra Nooyi and others, etc. were kept by Sheena in a folder.

But she was very lonely as a child. She writes: “Oh! Happy Birthday to me! But I am not happy. It seems as if I have got nothing in my life. Nothing! My future seems very bleak to me. Just depression has encircled me from all sides. Disgusting life it is. I hate my mother, that bloody b***h. She is not a mother. She is a witch…”

Sheena was also not happy when Indrani married Peter Mukerjea. “And now she got married with that old man (Peter Mukerjea). Her this act to Aita & Kaka (Sheena’s grandparents) seems very prestigious, very wise, but not in case of me (Read: my grandparents may find this prestigious or wise, but not me). I hate her. I wish her soul gets condemned and even in hell. I have much grief, much tears to flow but when, where and in front of whom.”