Twenty-four years old and none the wiser.
Birthdays are a good thing. Gifts and wishes apart, they are place markers in our story, with notes scribbled them, some highlighted, others scratched-over and re-written.
The thought of birthdays rekindles a multitude of memories. A day in 365 congratulating you for making it all this way. A day in 365 spurring you on for another round. God, so many memories, I am laughing silently as I think of the absurdity of this endeavor to put some of my gems in words…but I’ll try.
Zero
8:03am 22nd June 1981
I have absolutely no idea how the nurses looked and I have a solid case for not doing so – it was 8:03am for heavens sake. NOT the best time to be woken up, ejected out of the warm womb and spanked! No wonder I cried.
One
Morning 22nd June 1982
The incriminating evidence was captured on camera. I can see thatha (grandpa) holding me in his lap, dad has my head locked in his strong hold, mom is looking on helplessly as the strange man in the photo bores a hole in my earlobe. I still flinch with pain when I look at the little face in the photo and I still can’t understand why. “It’s our tradition”, say parents, but I secretly think they were never happy when the doctor announced they had a son.
There is a second picture - I am all puffy red-eyed, two gold droplets dangling from my ears – that’s cute little girly for you. Of course no one knew this gift would show its magic sixteen years later when the cutest girl in the Commerce section turned, somehow spotted the little dip and assumed I had got just this one pierced over the weekend! I smiled, winked and looked straight ahead.
Four
Evening 22nd June 1985
It was a bright summer evening when I received my first real gift; at least this is the one I remember. The box enshrining it left little to imagination. On it was the life size illustration of the LEGO machine gun. My adorable periamma (aunt) got it for me. Maybe this was her way of telling me the world was a bitch and it was never too early to master these weapons. Nobel thoughts, but back then I was still a non-violent Brahmin boy, strictly vegetarian too. Holding the rugged hard plastic, fingering the lethal trigger filled me with such power and uncontrollable passion that I took a strong stride forward and shoved the nozzle into periamma’s smiling face.
Since then she reminds me of the incident each birthday - of this gift and the near maiming of her pretty face. I adore her all the more now. Just wish she had given me a pen instead and told me about its power. Or just stuck to simple blow-it-yourself rainbow colored balls.
Nine
9th September 1990
A friend’s birthday for a change. The whole class had been invited over that evening. The little prince had a great party thrown: delicious food with exotic flavors, fancy games where everybody won something, jugglers from the Russian circus and even a white elephant for special effects. Almost all of that.
I pestered mom to let me wear my new clothes. A dashing white and red checked shirt with smart grey shorts. Sparkling white socks and gleaming black shoes. There are two things I remember about my new clothes then. First, my younger brother would have the exact matching clothes. Maybe it gave my parents more confidence in our common parentage. Or maybe it was just to save a little more on the cloth. Second, all my new clothes came from the same smiling tailor and they were always a size too big to allow us to grow into them as the year went by. Running around in them, holding on and balancing the shorts on the butt curve was an art I learnt then. Now I do it with my jeans.
And thus in my pretty clothes I went trotting along to the party with a gift tucked safely under my armpit. The moment I entered the party I felt my gift shrink into itself at the sight of the huge glittering gifts that had made it before mine. It didn’t matter I had almost emptied my pocket money of Rs. 25 to buy the gift. It was small and I had an awkward time hiding it inside the heap and praying it would be never found.
As the party cruised along I was totally enjoying myself, gobbling up the samosas[1] and downing thumbs-up with D, my good ol’ chum. It was then that two elder cousins of the prince called me over. They must have been high school kids then. My initial thoughts were whether they had an issue with the second samosa that I had just devoured. But all he had was a harmless question:
“Which school do you go to?”
That was simple enough. I replied “FAPS” and turned to focus on food.
“Are you sure? You look like you just walked out of Lourdes[2] school.”
It didn’t make sense immediately. They were helpful enough to snigger and pull on my shirt and point to my black shoes. And then it dawned. At that moment the sweet candy Life disrobed and showed me her naked dirty side. At that moment, standing in those clothes and those black shoes, amidst the pomp and show of all others around me, I turned communist and cried “Hail Robin Hood!”
Twelve
Late 1993
Twelve years old and strange emotions are knocking at your heart. When I think of 1993 and the seventh grade there is just one glowing memory which blankets all others. The memory of being in Love – your first.
I knew her since kindergarten. Pulling her pony tail in class, walking back hand-in-hand to the play school, watching her running around in her shimeez[3] in the hot sun, fabricating stories of kings and queens – we grew up together - sometimes we were best buddies and sometimes we were totally indifferent to the other’s existence.
And that fateful afternoon I watched her hold on to the just distributed math test paper. She was sobbing softly. She never cried about bad marks. Today her eyes were on the new boy in the class. The blue-eyed boy was sobbing over his score and she was crying for him. For the first time I heard a crumpling, breaking sound somewhere in my chest. I was heart broken even before realizing I was so much in love with her.
Dear Thippi, how different things would have been had your eyes but been on me that day? You could call it puppy love, crush, or anything else but it stayed with me for 12 years. I still have our old dusty picture taken in first grade – we won the running race – I am in my sailor’s suit. I had sprinted to you, kissed you on the cheek and the two of us had dashed to the finish line. After 12 years you are dashing to the finish line without me. You have your blue-eyed boy with you. And when I saw you with him a couple of months ago I felt calm all of a sudden. The look on your face was priceless, the look on his was even more so, and we hugged, the first and the last, and pooff – there – I knew I had moved on.
Eighteen
22nd June 1999
There are those birthdays when you know things won’t be the same ever again. My eighteenth birthday was by far the biggest with a dozen or more friends turning up home. All of them had pooled in money to buy me my first Walkman. Throughout the evening I had been numb and was trying to hide it under the chattering mask. I was to leave for undergrad studies in Singapore ten days from then. For someone who had been in the same school and same home for fourteen years this was a big step. Everyone seemed happy around me. Mom and dad were proud.
I fell asleep listening to John Denver. That romantic melancholic bastard just made it worse to leave all you know and step into the unknown.
“…Cause i'm leaving on a jet-plane, Don't know when i'll be back again…”
It is just amazing how fast we grow up once we are away from our nest.
Twenty Four
22nd June 2005
Twenty-four years old and none the wiser. Birthdays that come bang in the middle of the workweek are just too depressing. But then there is the “surprise” mid-night party, orchestrated by friends who really care, and attended by cake hungry nobodies. Maybe it was the predictability of such events that got to me. For the first time I was scared of growing old. Growing old with questions piling up each day. Without a moment to yourself to think about the answers.
But I am just too good (or naïve) to let the weekend go by in thought. I was out drinking and dancing in the comfort of smoky darkness. Maybe it was the knowledge that many of the faces illuminated by the revolving beam of light were just as clueless as I was. I closed my eyes and imagined myself moving to the music. The questions will have to wait for another day. I am just not ready yet to grow old.
The thought of birthdays rekindles a multitude of memories. A day in 365 congratulating you for making it all this way. A day in 365 spurring you on for another round. God, so many memories, I am laughing silently as I think of the absurdity of this endeavor to put some of my gems in words…but I’ll try.
Zero
8:03am 22nd June 1981
I have absolutely no idea how the nurses looked and I have a solid case for not doing so – it was 8:03am for heavens sake. NOT the best time to be woken up, ejected out of the warm womb and spanked! No wonder I cried.
One
Morning 22nd June 1982
The incriminating evidence was captured on camera. I can see thatha (grandpa) holding me in his lap, dad has my head locked in his strong hold, mom is looking on helplessly as the strange man in the photo bores a hole in my earlobe. I still flinch with pain when I look at the little face in the photo and I still can’t understand why. “It’s our tradition”, say parents, but I secretly think they were never happy when the doctor announced they had a son.
There is a second picture - I am all puffy red-eyed, two gold droplets dangling from my ears – that’s cute little girly for you. Of course no one knew this gift would show its magic sixteen years later when the cutest girl in the Commerce section turned, somehow spotted the little dip and assumed I had got just this one pierced over the weekend! I smiled, winked and looked straight ahead.
Four
Evening 22nd June 1985
It was a bright summer evening when I received my first real gift; at least this is the one I remember. The box enshrining it left little to imagination. On it was the life size illustration of the LEGO machine gun. My adorable periamma (aunt) got it for me. Maybe this was her way of telling me the world was a bitch and it was never too early to master these weapons. Nobel thoughts, but back then I was still a non-violent Brahmin boy, strictly vegetarian too. Holding the rugged hard plastic, fingering the lethal trigger filled me with such power and uncontrollable passion that I took a strong stride forward and shoved the nozzle into periamma’s smiling face.
Since then she reminds me of the incident each birthday - of this gift and the near maiming of her pretty face. I adore her all the more now. Just wish she had given me a pen instead and told me about its power. Or just stuck to simple blow-it-yourself rainbow colored balls.
Nine
9th September 1990
A friend’s birthday for a change. The whole class had been invited over that evening. The little prince had a great party thrown: delicious food with exotic flavors, fancy games where everybody won something, jugglers from the Russian circus and even a white elephant for special effects. Almost all of that.
I pestered mom to let me wear my new clothes. A dashing white and red checked shirt with smart grey shorts. Sparkling white socks and gleaming black shoes. There are two things I remember about my new clothes then. First, my younger brother would have the exact matching clothes. Maybe it gave my parents more confidence in our common parentage. Or maybe it was just to save a little more on the cloth. Second, all my new clothes came from the same smiling tailor and they were always a size too big to allow us to grow into them as the year went by. Running around in them, holding on and balancing the shorts on the butt curve was an art I learnt then. Now I do it with my jeans.
And thus in my pretty clothes I went trotting along to the party with a gift tucked safely under my armpit. The moment I entered the party I felt my gift shrink into itself at the sight of the huge glittering gifts that had made it before mine. It didn’t matter I had almost emptied my pocket money of Rs. 25 to buy the gift. It was small and I had an awkward time hiding it inside the heap and praying it would be never found.
As the party cruised along I was totally enjoying myself, gobbling up the samosas[1] and downing thumbs-up with D, my good ol’ chum. It was then that two elder cousins of the prince called me over. They must have been high school kids then. My initial thoughts were whether they had an issue with the second samosa that I had just devoured. But all he had was a harmless question:
“Which school do you go to?”
That was simple enough. I replied “FAPS” and turned to focus on food.
“Are you sure? You look like you just walked out of Lourdes[2] school.”
It didn’t make sense immediately. They were helpful enough to snigger and pull on my shirt and point to my black shoes. And then it dawned. At that moment the sweet candy Life disrobed and showed me her naked dirty side. At that moment, standing in those clothes and those black shoes, amidst the pomp and show of all others around me, I turned communist and cried “Hail Robin Hood!”
Twelve
Late 1993
Twelve years old and strange emotions are knocking at your heart. When I think of 1993 and the seventh grade there is just one glowing memory which blankets all others. The memory of being in Love – your first.
I knew her since kindergarten. Pulling her pony tail in class, walking back hand-in-hand to the play school, watching her running around in her shimeez[3] in the hot sun, fabricating stories of kings and queens – we grew up together - sometimes we were best buddies and sometimes we were totally indifferent to the other’s existence.
And that fateful afternoon I watched her hold on to the just distributed math test paper. She was sobbing softly. She never cried about bad marks. Today her eyes were on the new boy in the class. The blue-eyed boy was sobbing over his score and she was crying for him. For the first time I heard a crumpling, breaking sound somewhere in my chest. I was heart broken even before realizing I was so much in love with her.
Dear Thippi, how different things would have been had your eyes but been on me that day? You could call it puppy love, crush, or anything else but it stayed with me for 12 years. I still have our old dusty picture taken in first grade – we won the running race – I am in my sailor’s suit. I had sprinted to you, kissed you on the cheek and the two of us had dashed to the finish line. After 12 years you are dashing to the finish line without me. You have your blue-eyed boy with you. And when I saw you with him a couple of months ago I felt calm all of a sudden. The look on your face was priceless, the look on his was even more so, and we hugged, the first and the last, and pooff – there – I knew I had moved on.
Eighteen
22nd June 1999
There are those birthdays when you know things won’t be the same ever again. My eighteenth birthday was by far the biggest with a dozen or more friends turning up home. All of them had pooled in money to buy me my first Walkman. Throughout the evening I had been numb and was trying to hide it under the chattering mask. I was to leave for undergrad studies in Singapore ten days from then. For someone who had been in the same school and same home for fourteen years this was a big step. Everyone seemed happy around me. Mom and dad were proud.
I fell asleep listening to John Denver. That romantic melancholic bastard just made it worse to leave all you know and step into the unknown.
“…Cause i'm leaving on a jet-plane, Don't know when i'll be back again…”
It is just amazing how fast we grow up once we are away from our nest.
Twenty Four
22nd June 2005
Twenty-four years old and none the wiser. Birthdays that come bang in the middle of the workweek are just too depressing. But then there is the “surprise” mid-night party, orchestrated by friends who really care, and attended by cake hungry nobodies. Maybe it was the predictability of such events that got to me. For the first time I was scared of growing old. Growing old with questions piling up each day. Without a moment to yourself to think about the answers.
But I am just too good (or naïve) to let the weekend go by in thought. I was out drinking and dancing in the comfort of smoky darkness. Maybe it was the knowledge that many of the faces illuminated by the revolving beam of light were just as clueless as I was. I closed my eyes and imagined myself moving to the music. The questions will have to wait for another day. I am just not ready yet to grow old.
[1] A small fried turnover of Indian origin that is filled with seasoned vegetables or meat.
[2] A school adjacent to FAPS where the poor kids went.
[3] A loose flowing cotton camisole worn by young girls.
Iyer