Birthdays are one of the most special days in one’s year. Its a day of many meanings and much symbolism. What does a birthday celebrate ?? Is it meant to remind one of the day they were born? Well frankly I don’t remember anything about the day I was born. I was too tiny and small then. All I know of that day is from what my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles tell me.
Same is the case with everyone am sure. We wish people a very happy birthday and bless them with many returns of the same in the year ahead. But then what is it about birthdays that we need to be so happy about ? For one it reminds us that we are a whole year older that day. Yesterday you were 49 but overnight you are now 50 !!! What a pleasing thought that is ??
I firmly believe that some of the best years are ones spent as a child. The years of care free abandon, with nary a care in the world and nothing to worry about. So then as every birthday comes, I am just reminded of how far away I am from those happy childhood days and how they will never come back.
Birthdays are also times to be with family and friends and celebrate all the good things that one is blessed with. Parsis in that case are double lucky. We have two birthdays, one by the english calendar and one by the parsi calendar. For every leap year the parsi calendar loses a day. And hence at age 28, your english calendar birthday and parsi calendar birthday will differ by a whole week.
Of course both birthdays are spent with aplomb. New clothes, presents and gifts, visit to the fire temple, lunch and dinner with family and with friends, and parties take up the whole day. In younger days birthdays were a day looked forward to with unabandoned eagerness. It was the only day in the whole school year when you could wear “colored clothes” to school. You would cut a cake in school in front of the whole class and then take a plate of cake and along with your best friend, go from classroom to classroom and share it with every teacher. It was a funny experience and yet something looked forward to.
As the years went by, birthdays in college became days to treat friends at the most expensive “joint” your pocket money could afford !!
And in the years after college, it is spent at work for most part of the day with the festivities reserved for the end of the day.
Birthdays are also times for retrospection of what has happened in the past year and what will in the year ahead. Birthdays are unique milestone markers on the highway of life. At the start of the journey they are eagerly awaited, then they become a regular occurrence and maybe towards the end of the journey become dreaded.
Birthdays are also a time to spend together with family. Of course this is not always possible. And when it is not, there is always a tinge of sadness. As I spend this day away from my dearest, I wish her a very happy birthday. Have a blast my dearest. You deserve the best.
