As the Babri Masjid was being brought down, I celebrated.
I had come up with this line a few years ago, and said that whenever I write my autobiography, I’m going to begin it this way. And while I’m not as certain nowadays that I’ll write an autobiography, in case I write one I’ll still use this line to open it.
This line could also be used in a logic class, the kind of lectures I delivered fairly frequently between 2012 and 2016, illustrating logical fallacies. For this one might induce the correlation-is-causation fallacy in your head, and you might think that if I celebrated while the Babri Masjid was being brought down, I must be a Muslim-hating bigot. So here is what will be the second line in my autobiography, whenever I write it:
It was my tenth birthday, and there was a party at home.
There is something special about your birthday falling on Sundays. The first time that happened, in 1987, was also the first time that my parents organised a birthday party for me. I’m too young to know how many people came, but there were a lot of people filling our house that evening. We had professional catering and I got so many gifts that I got to using some of them (such as Enid Blyton story books) several years later.
Maybe I read some of the books around the time my birthday fell on a Sunday once again, which happened in 1992. That also happened to be the next time I had a party at home, and this one was different, with less than ten guests, with all of them being my classmates in school.
My mother had done the cooking that day. We played cricket and hide-and-seek, and some other party games (which I don’t remember now). And then later that evening, news on television told us that the Babri Masjid had been brought down that day and riots had started.
The only thing that registered in my head then was that there would be no school the next day, and I didn’t know when I would distribute the chocolates I had bought for the customary school distribution.
The long term impact, though, was that my birthday got inextricably linked to the Babri Masjid demolition.
So over the years, when people have searched for an anchor to remember my birthday, they’ve inevitably used news of the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition. This morning, for example, I got a message that said “Happy birthday. Babri Masjid article came up somewhere 🙂 “. Another friend messaged me to remind me of what I’ve written to being this post.
A couple of years back, a friend messaged me later in December apologising for missing my birthday, adding that he had missed it because there wasn’t much news about the Babri Masjid anniversary. This must have been in 2016, which was among my worst birthdays because beyond close family, hardly anyone wished me that day.
And I blame former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa for that, for after a rather prolonged illness, she had passed away the previous night. And that meant that the news waves in India on the 6th of December 2016 were filled with news of Jayalalithaa’s demise, with any Babri Masjid anniversary stuff being pushed to the backburner.
The situation got rectified last year with it being the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, so the number of people who wished me went back to “normal levels”. And perhaps with elections being round the corner again, and without an important death to distract the news, I’m guessing that Babri Masjid has made enough news today for enough people to remember my birthday!
I must also take this opportunity to thank certain entities who unfailingly wish me on every birthday.
Oh, and I discovered this morning that today is 6/12/18. And my wife helpfully added that I turned 36 today.
Now I feel really old!