Happy Birthday To Me. And To You.

It’s the birthday season (At least for me) and there is much excitement in the air. There is also a wilful energy, which tries to gather all the happiness and love that I have and pack it into one day. The people who may forget have been reminded, the lazy ones have been sent messages asking ‘Have you couriered my gift?’, the partner patiently listens to me wondering aloud for the nth time, ‘I wonder what my surprise will be?’.

The logical part of me knows that a birthday is an ordinary day, a day like any other and only a megalomaniac would feel otherwise. However, the little girl who blew out candles and who till now had been covered with a fine coating of cynicism and coolness, always emerges, with bright eyes and a naiveté that is either stupid or endearing.

I sometimes wonder whether all this effort and manufactured excitement are worth it. A pragmatic cousin of mine adds fuel to my escalating doubts. ‘What’s the point?’ she asks, ‘Do you realise you are celebrating an event, which you had no say in? Does getting a gift really make you happy?’ When questions like that are shot at me, agreeing makes me feel petty. Or worse, like a fake.

A friend of mine reassures me. He thinks it’s extremely important to celebrate life’s little moments. According to him, that’s how we mark time. That’s how life gets measured, for memories make a life and sometimes, we have to make those memories. When we talk about the years gone by, it’s never ‘Remember 2009?’, it’s always ‘Remember that crazy birthday party where you dropped all your food into the swimming pool?’

I wonder why as people get older they seem less keen on celebrating their birthdays? I am not sure whether this is because their interest in life wanes or more frighteningly, they think they are not worthy of such an honour.  I don’t want to ever get there. I want to be like my friend Z, who pierced her nose on her 60th birthday. That gesture was a beautiful celebration, of life and of beauty.

Ever since I turned eighteen, my plan for every birthday has been quite simple. I like travelling during that time, for new places and discoveries never disappoint, unlike people. The place is unimportant as long as it is somewhere I’ve never been before. I remember this one birthday where my bank balance was less than my age, I took a bus alone and went to a nearby village. There, in a leaky hut I ate a watery, bland dal with a clump of hard boiled rice.

Nothing was beautiful around me except for a large tree whose gnarled ugliness had adequate charm to impress a city-born. When my bill came, I couldn’t contain my angst and I blurted out, ‘It’s my birthday today.’ That villager in his checked lungi and bare chest, stared at me with his rheumy eyes and with the detachment of a frog in a thunderstorm, deducted ₹2 from the total. That’s it. No cake, no birthday wishes, no nothing.

Read more by the author: Silencing The Screaming Sensation

That night, after I crawled back to my hut, richer by ₹2, I sat making a list of all the things I wanted to achieve over the next year. As my plans unfolded, I found myself getting more and more euphoric. I couldn’t help thinking how lucky each one of us is. For even when we don’t have anybody, we can always count on ourselves. And perhaps, that’s why every birthday is worthy of a celebration.

Still Figuring It Out’ a funny, sad, questioning take on adulthood will appear every Saturday on newsable.com. Arathi Menon is the author of Leaving Home With Half a Fridge, a memoir published by Pan Macmillan. She tweets at https://twitter.com/unopenedbottle. The views expressed here are her own.