What Bridget Jones's Diary Taught Me About Life

Before the film came the book, and both taught me how to find humour in heartbreak. Thirty years since the latter released, I revisit its learnings on life and literature.

- By Snigdha Ahuja

The fact that I was seven when Helen Fielding published Bridget Jones's Diary in 1996 (and the fact that you now know my age) continues to unsettle me. I discovered the book years after it had hit the shelf, in a nondescript corner of my school library. By then, the films had made actor Renée Zellweger (who plays the titular character) the narrator in my head—complete with a sharp British accent.

Imagine a teenager struggling with weight issues in an educational institution that thrived on building marksheets over morales, and an imagination so active that daydreaming was their favourite sport. That was me, and Bridget fit right in—perfectly awkward, deliriously and mostly unintentionally funny, far from the size zero obsession of the early 2000s, and with hope and wit mingling in a love triangle that she manifested decades before Instagram juiced the word.

Fielding created a universe that played with ideas of insecurities, friendship, womanhood, and the workplace with such nonchalance that there were always feelings to feel. “Sunday January 1— Food consumed today: 2 pkts Emmenthal cheese slices, 14 cold new potatoes, 2 Bloody Marys (count as food as contain Worcester sauce and tomatoes)” —reads an entry in the book which is written like a daily diary.