“Happy birthday” I wrote on his
wall before switching off the phone and boarding the flight. He was my classmate till Class 10. In the five
years since then, there had been no more correspondence between us, apart from
wishing each other on our birthdays, without fail.
******************
My birthday being in the month of May, I
never got to celebrate it in school. But then, I saw my friends who had
birthdays during summer vacations celebrate on the first day of the new session.
After much pondering and deliberation, I decided to do the same. This was in
Class 4. Queerly though, none of my friends celebrated their birthdays that
year! I stood there - in front of the class in a cream-colored kurta-pyjama and a
maroon overcoat, grinning sheepishly as they sang for me. I never celebrated my
birthday in school ever again.
However, I eagerly awaited others
birthdays. Free chocolates were reason enough. Moreover, all the singing and
clapping easily took ten minutes of a forty-minute period! He (or she) stood in
front of the class, scanning our faces and smiling while we sang for him. The
most important part came after this – distribution of chocolates. Alpenliebe
was standard. Eclairs was a little higher. If, by chance, anybody distributed 5
Star or Dairy Milk, he was talked about and praised until the last possible
remnant of the chocolate was out of the system! We anxiously waited to hear who
he chose to accompany him for distributing chocolates to other teachers. My
face would light up and chest puff up whenever my name was called. He had just
acknowledged our friendship over others! Moreover it gave me the authorization
to ‘bunk’ class (though the word was not familiar then). I would go across the
school, peeping into other classes and show off in front of my friends. Even if
he and I weren’t close friends, it made sense to stay close to him, at least
that day. For at the end of the day, it gave me better claim over the
chocolates that were remaining!
Enter high school, the routine saw some
variations. Singing of “Happy birthday…” was now accompanied by giggles and
nudges at his crush. At the end of the day, some chocolates were reserved for
his crush in the hope of receiving that wish with a personal touch. More often
than not, that did not happen and those chocolates were distributed among us
friends. The hope remained, though!
Now, hundreds of kilometers away from
home, in college, birthday celebrations have assumed a new avatar - birthday
bumps accompanied by cutting the cake at midnight, followed by wishes from all
those around, ending in a token treat. Celebrations are incomplete without a
high-class dinner for close friends at posh restaurants along with beverages of
choice. Very few friends call up to wish while the rest of them end up wishing
over social media. All of us have been guilty of doing the same, no doubt.
The next day is spent replying to all those
posts on the wall, trying to derive a sense of satisfaction at our prominence
in peer groups, validating ourselves based on the number of people who cared to
wish on our birthday over social media. At the same time, we end up thinking of
hashtags and editing selfies to be uploaded on Instagram, subjecting ourselves
to yet another round of validation. At the risk of being labelled a ‘hopeless
romantic’, I believe that birthdays were more meaningful before social media
took control of our lives – when wishes were only from those who really cared
(for chocolates at least) and there was no necessity of fiddling with the phone
every few minutes to check how many more had wished….
******************
The chain of thoughts was broken by the
landing of the flight. Switching on the phone, a notification said that my
friend had commented on my post. I ‘like’d it.
