Tag: birthday

When Jayalalithaa Ruined My Birthday

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!

Customised Google Doodle

I’m very impressed with Google for having customised a Doodle for my birthday. I’m always logged in to Chrome, and I’ve told Google Plus when my birthday is, so it’s rather trivial to do this. However, that they have done this is rather impressive, and I’m happy with them.

Customised Google Doodle

I’m also happy with most financial institutions I have a relationship with, for since morning my mailbox has been flooded with messages from all these institutions wishing me a happy birthday. I don’t know what information other e-commerce sites have about be, but not many of them have bothered to wish me so far  (not that I’m complaining). The only exception is FabFurnish (which is bizarre since I’ve never bought from them) which has not only wished me but also sent me a discount code!

This whole business of Customer Relationship Management is bizarre, I tell you!

Twenty Six

The reason I’m writing this so late in the day is that I’ve been confused as to what to call this post. I started from a short list of maybe a dozen names, and then brought the list down to two – “twenty six” and “twenty fucking six”. Finally I decided to go for the former since the swearword in the latter doesn’t seem to add much value.

If I were to count my years using letters of the English alphabet, I would today increment it from Y to Z, taking into consideration that the Gregorian calendar may not be perfectly accurate. However, for this kind of a time horizon, and given our desired least count, it is definitely more accurate than the Hindu calendar so we will stick to it. Ok, if you have still not got the point, “aaj mEra happy birthday hai“. Imagine me wearing a yellow suit and shouting that line upwards as you look down from your balcony.

My original plan was to write about birthdays itself, as to how they seem to have lost significance, and as I’ve grown older, and started feeling old, they seem to have been reduced to a counter. I was planning to write about how I have to go really long back in order to find a memorable birthday, and about how it’s generally been a disappointment in recent time.

Vyshnavi Doss, who is older than me by ten days, decided to use her Twenty Sixth by writing something on these lines. It was as if she was exploiting her seniority by taking away words from my fingers. Here is a quote, but I urge you to read the whole thing. I completely empathise with the first part of the essay.

Now this is going to sound nutty, but I used to feel more pressure than elation on my birthday. Not counting my school years of course. That was when by default, either you distributed sweets to everyone at school, or your mom hosted a party for you and you got all the attention and gifts. Your birthday was announced at the assembly, your classmates sang for you, and you pretty much owned the day! Those were the protected years. Then I got into college where I had to work my way up towards making friends. I am a confirmed ambivert. I am a friendly person, but not necessarily popular in the zillion people on my friend-list sense of the term. So the birthday situation after I left school had always been very iffy – there was noone to really ensure it was special. To give me that “Surpriiiiiiseee!!!” People have always mattered a lot to me, and I believe that a good birthday is made up by the people around you. And while my birthdays after school were simple and pleasant, my expectation of something utterly out of the world remained the same. So the worry on my birthday could be attributed to mainly two things – a small closeted social circle, and high ambitions. Often my expectation has been met with disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – of course my parents, my relatives and my close friends have made all the effort in their capacities to make my day special. And I have been happy. But I think I’m quite a tough-to-please person. I’ve always wanted that climax.

Instead, I think I’ll do one of those this-day-that-year things. Given my superior long-term memory, I think this is the kind of stuff that I’m likely to be good at. Here are some excerpts.(rest under the fold)

Continue reading “Twenty Six”