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.