On The Run Blogger

A millionaire property moghul’s daughter who jumped jail and reveled in her freedom on the popular blog Myspace.com is back behind bars.

Farah Damji, a 39-year-old Asian Indian mother of two children, who once edited an Asian lifestyle magazine and is serving a 31/2 year sentence for fraud, maintained an online journal during her five days on the lam, after absconding from Downview prison in Surrey.

The on-the-lam blogger celebrated her freedom in an entry titled “Sea Air”: “It’s so peaceful, the sound of seagulls replacing the screaming police sirens streaming up and down Kings Road. Blue skies, sea air. Some of the prison pallor is leaving me, I’m starting to feel awake again. Gonna go for a long walk this morning.”

In another entry, Damji, who for a time was a prominent South Asian journalist, wrote: “I’ve had calls from every major newspaper and many respected journos, dying for me to tell my side of it. And guess what I won’t. Because I want you to go and buy the book so that all this hard work doesn’t lead to my book ending up on the three-for-two pile at Waterstones.”

Perhaps aware that her life on the lam may come to an end, she curried favor with her jailer: “Gov. Murray, Downview’s new governor, is gentle and kind, with big soft dark brown eyes. In Bad Girls he’d have been a rascal, but he was always respectful and honest. Is it possible to admire your jailer?”

On her first day of freedom Damji noted: “It feels incredibly strange to be allowed this taste of freedom again. It’s the silly things I missed, my Pratesi bed linen, the smell of my daughter’s golden brown hair and the way the sun dances in her eyes like fire in a forest, watching my son’s sportsday. It’s not the people at all, very few I even want to maintain any contact with from the old life.”

In her last entry, before she was tracked down by police after they were tipped off by a local newspaper, Damji protested: Women should not go to prison. I did so I can say that. I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t break into anyone’s house, I didn’t hurt anyone with violence or arms, I didn’t become a terrorist and blow this whole mess apart. I made a lot of mistakes and I think I have learned from them. OK?”

Right.