Turning Twenty-five

Birthdays are a lot of fun, if you are a kid. As an adult, birthdays become annoying. I think it is a bell curve, wherein the beginning you don’t care about your birthday because let’s face it, you are much too young. This interest or enjoyment increases with time when you are a kid and finally understand that birthday = gifts, and then comes back slumping when society thinks you are much too big to be wearing a birthday cap and blowing out candles. I am one of those people who always dread their birthdays. Somehow because you expect your birthday to be special, and as a grownup, there isn’t much special left to be done in life, ice cream cakes are not a novelty anymore and any money you get goes towards your credit card fund and not to buy a magnifying glass and playing detective.

Somehow there is too much pressure on birthdays, and hence the dread. You've got to party, you have to have a good time, and in achieving that, simple things that otherwise make you happy fail to have that effect. Another thing that bothers me about birthdays as a grownup is that you slowly mark off a year of your life and you reflect and ponder where you were and how far you have come and believe me all this pondering can never be good, especially when you are about to be turning 25. Ahem!

My birthday falls in June, so never really got a chance to celebrate it with school friends or college friends. My birthdays as a kid were always celebrated at my grandparent’s house, where I would spend it playing tambola with their friends who were at least 7X my age. After a spirited game of tambola, I would proceed to perform for them, which would mostly be a dance routine I had learned at school. And thinking about it in retrospect, those were some really good birthdays.

But yes, getting back to the dread. This year I decided rather than dreading and fake smiling on my birthday I will do something to help others and to make someone else’s day. I have a few things in mind, and if I am able to execute those this weekend, it would mean a lot to me. So here is to turning a year older, a year stronger, a year wiser and even more goofier, because what fun is life without it. And this to all the people who build me up!

Happy birthday to me!

PS: I had a really really amazing 25th birthday!