Shree's Scribbles

Both of us went to boarding school where Birthdays are celebrated with ones friends, classmates and the teachers, one wanted to invite, amidst cake cutting, and the tea time party in the refectory(dining hall) where your friends were also allowed to decorate the place with baloons and streamers and off course it was Ma and Baba who either came before tea time with the cake and the goodies or else had them delivered if they had visited earlier in the day.

Post boarding school, birthdays were celebrated in the Delhi university campus as a hostler in restaurants or Nirula's in Kamlanagar (which were the most popular joints in those days in addition to the Wimpy's) when Pizza Hut and McDonald's and others of today had not yet set up shop in India. The ceremonial cake cutting with other grub was co-course there at the hostel dining hall .

After college I worked in my home town Kolkata as by then I had a choice of where I wanted to be as till then it was always Ma's decision as to which was the best place for my sister and me. Baba's sometimes quiet and at other times vocal dissent were met with, either silent or vocal assent of a convent, boarding school upbringing from Ma. I resented it, till lately I have begun to realise the exposure and the disciplined life style in addition to all the extra curricular activitiesyou are compelled to participate in as a boarder does enhance your personality and improves your skills which greatly help in your career.

Since the beginning of our (my sisters and mine ) working life we either had Birthday bashes with friends at home or outside but Ma and Baba never ever forgot to celebrate it in the traditional Bengali way of a puja and blessings with diya, mala, dhaan, dubba and payesh (garland, wheat grain, very fresh grass and rice pudding or kheer) which was served in a silver platter and Ma and Ba blessed us and fed us a spoonfool of the payesh and then we finished it our-selves. Till we started school as kids too this was the way Birthdays were celebrated and of-course there was always the Birthday dress.

In later years this was in addition to a cake-cutting or even wine, champagne and vodka and dinner celebrations we had with friends either at home or at pubs. Ma and Baba through all these years never forgot the Birtday gifts either, though for the last few years they gave us money to buy our-selves what we liked and this was given in cheque first thing in the morning of our Birthdays. This was Ma's idea of hoping that we may save it instead of actually blowing it up as we already spent what we ourselves earned anyways.

On the morning of my thirty-fifth birthday a couple of days back, I awoke with mixed feelings of joy (I love celebrations ), remorse (at turning a year older and finally reaching the much dreaded descent to life's end), hope (that the second and best part of life was just beggining) and expectation (of what the day ahead and the year to come held in store for me ).

I decided to celebrate my birtday differently this year and since this has been in many ways the beggining of a new life for me I decided to start the day with a visit to the nearest Balaji temple(T. Nagar) dressed in a saree, very fondly courired to me by my new Ma, my mother-in-law.

This was followed by a very typical south Indian breakfast at the popular Ratna Cafe of idli, vada and filter coffee as if just to celebrate my new life in Chennai. Then procceeding to office where again I celebrated by cutting a cake which was organised by office and then ended the day in a popular Chennai pub, a Spanish Tavern called Zara which even on a Wednesday was packed to full with at least 3-4 tables celebrating birthdays and of course I did not forget to change into an outfit suiting the evening picked up by my husband.

I do not know what turn life will take and maybe there may come a time when I stop celebrating my birthday as I will probably have many more occasions to celebrate but the fond memory of the thirty five birthdays I have spent will be enough to last a lifetime.

My parents had had an arranged marriage and were yet to work out a convenient post-marriage life. Baba could not move to Delhi as his business was just settling in and the prospects looked positive. In due time they decided that Ma would move to Kolkata but that did not happen till I was five. We went to Kolkata for the summer vacations and Baba came to Delhi for puja holidays. Perhaps this arrangement left an impact in my mind which led me to relocate to Chennai -- where my husband lives -- immediately after marraige.

I quit my job and took up another with which though I am not very happy, but it allows me to have a job as well as be with my husband. I do not really blame my mother for not moving immediately. She did not have the means to, as Baba's business could well do with the extra income her work brought in in the initial years. Moreover both my parents did not have their parents or a support system like me and my husband have, one which we can fall back on in case of a financial emergency.

Ma finally gave up a job she enjoyed and the place she was so comfortable in, when I turned five, when Baba's business could afford it, and took up a lecturer's job in Calcutta University, which I know she never really enjoyed though she never ever mentioned it or was compensated like her previous job but from where she retired at the age of sixty as principal of the college. I have seen numerous long distance marriages and the children in-between other than my own childhood and they are not very happy ones.

Often in life one has to choose between two "happinessess" and that is what I did. I chose togetherness, love and a prospective happy married life to happiness in the job. Sometimes when I feel unhappy with my job I just remind my-self that you lose some to gain some and what I have gained is the love and company of my husband who happens to be cooking dinner as I write this as he wanted to cook for us, today being the eve of my birthday.

I got married this April and moved to Chennai where my husband lives, after half a lifetime of living in Kolkata where I was born, brought up and spent some of the best years of my life. The last six months have turned my life totally around with such amazing speed that I am as yet reeling from its impact and trying to catch my breath.

I am in a new city whose language and culture I am yet to understand, with a new job and of course "marital life" with a person whom I know since two months before we got married. I do not really have anything to complain about as I am married to a great guy who not only loves me but is also caring and cool.

I have even managed to get a better than decent job right away but change is change and however good change is it is not easy to embrace it without wanting to rush back to the comfort of your old life. So though on the one hand I am happy, I wake up every now and then in the morning imagining that I am in the comfort of my old bed wishing I could just laze around and have Ma take care of everything -- right up to organising my lunchbox for work and the maid placing breakfast on the table which I often, hardly found the time to eat. But those days are now part of nostalgia, and the only way to relive them is to write about them.

It is through my husband that I got to know about blogs: he is an inveterate blogger and I read his posts regularly. Today, with his help, I have managed to create this blog. After school and college, I have been mostly out of writing, though I read when I manage the time, and it feels great to write again -- it helps you capture your thoughts which otherwise would just pass you by -- as life does -- and maybe sometimes be forgotten forever or at best never be thought of again.

I am sure to be here often. This is just the beginning of my jottings.