Birthdays

Have you ever celebrated your birthday? I never have. But I used to celebrate the birthdays of my children as they have always been looking forward to it and longing for it, till they turned teens. As teenagers they felt that they have come off age and should have the liberty to celebrate the birthdays the way they choose. So we parents were relieved of our responsibilities of arranging the birthday parties except the finance part.

A couple of days back when I opened my Face Book page, a handful of birthday greetings was awaiting me. It made me foray into the significance of birthdays. When we think of birthdays what immediately come  into focus are the date and month in which one is born as the year is incremental. And for all practical purposes that date is the milestone for calculating one's age. However it is interesting to know that in so far as Kerala (customs vary from place to place and Country to Country) the Hindu community in particular attaches greater importance to the star under which a child is born. Matter-of-factly the star birthday invariably falls on a day other than the actual date of birth. Sounds whimsical. This practice is still prevalent and elders continue referring to the almanac (which is an off-shoot of astrology) for observing the star birthday.

During my childhood, the concept of birthday parties was insignificant as we grew up in a tiny village where birthday celebration was an unknown event. For us it was only the star birthday which assumed importance. My mother used to check the Malayalam calendar as almanac and astrology were the basis for finding out the planetary position and the Malayalam calendars carried the appropriate details drawn from the almanac.

On the star birthday, my mother will arrange for special poojas (prayers)  at the nearby temple. That day used to bring lot of excitement as I could relish the taste of the special sweet meal (payasam) which is symbolic of the star birthdays in those days. But things have changed drastically and nowadays very few people follow star birthdays. As time passed, with the advent of the fast food culture, the traditional birthday sweet meal has been replaced by the modern ice cream. Children prefer burgers, fries and soft drinks for the main course. The only delicacy which continues to be the part and parcel of any birthday is the specially made delicious cake.

Infrastructure development has brought radical changes in the village life and has helped bridge the gap between the villages and the cities remarkably. IT revolution has taken cell phones and internet even to the remotest village. Citizens are able to communicate and interact with their friends and dear ones at the flick of a button. Villagers started getting accustomed to the city life as the facilities which were only available to the cities in the past started spreading to the villages. Coffee shops and supermarkets sprang up in villages. TV channels gave an insight into different social functions and with that birthday parties also became a household affair in the villages.

During my childhood, birthday party was quite unfamiliar in our village.  Get together in a family was limited to a couple of occasions. One during a marriage and the other to condole the demise of a family member.

If my recollection is right, I had the first bite of a birthday cake when I was fifteen or sixteen years of age and that too after we migrated from a village to the city. And that was the very first time that I could take part in a birthday celebration. I was rather flabbergasted to view the arrangements for cutting the cake with snacks and drinks arrayed on the table followed by the lighting of candles with the children and their parents singing the birthday song in unison. And that day the birthday boy or girl turns a celebrity. The birthday child is greeted by the guests and showered with gifts (That reminds me of a rare gift - an Airbus A320 presented by the richest Indian in the world Mukesh Ambani to his wife Nita on her birthday). A common man can have such a gift only in his dream. But the happiness that a birthday child radiates while receiving the miniature of an aircraft as a birthday gift  carries more intrinsic value than the multi million rupee worth aircraft.  For a while I thought that I was in a totally different world. That was my first experience of a birthday party.

I tried to figure out as to who was the first to celebrate a birthday party on this planet. Is it Adam or Eve?. Has anyone ever tried to conduct a research on this? Or is it the innovation of the modern age?. Nobody knows. Birthday greetings do not just remind you that you are growing or getting old. There is more to it than meets the eye.

Thanks to technology. We continue to send greetings to each other from any corner of the world regardless of age. That indeed is a great way to celebrate birthdays.