Happy B'Day to me !

I was born on the 7^th of May,  more than three decades ago. I know,SHIT! Am old (my hairs have already started graying, though I feel it’s sexy to have a salt-pepper hair).However, not-so-long-ago, I was not so old.

I was born on a Friday, sometime in the morning. The day was pleasant, though a bit hot, but much less hot owing to the reason that we didn’t have much global warming back then. As usual, the sun emerged out of the sea, sometime past 6 and awakened the world.My Dad, out of previous night’s fatigue of not having slept the whole night, decided, that he could do with a cup of tea. He called his Father-in-law(my grand father) and officially appointed him the guard to my anytime-on-labor mother. And as it always happens (more often in movies), the moment my father left for the much needed cuppa, my mother announced her decision to go on labor. Thus I was born, much unannounced, much welcomed nevertheless.

But my story starts much before the start of my mother’s labor. I was conceived roughly nine months prior to the above mentioned day, out of love my father had for my mother. And the love was cemented and put on government registers 2 years before that fateful day when the seeds-of-love was sowed and the universe conspired with Einstein’s space-time to create me, exactly at the stroke of   09.15am.

I had a tough time coming out to the world. The world sympathized with the pain my mother went through in bringing me to the world. But what about me? Not a word of solace. The narrow fallopian tube squeezed me as if I was some carrot passing through a juicer. Seriously!

I was put confined to a dark, intimidating sack for the first nine months of my life, fed intravenously through a tube fitted to my tummy. The place was so dark and silent that it made me feel as if I was out somewhere in the space, between the andromeda galaxy and the milky way. Only sounds were the heart beats of my mother, which sounded like some African percussion instrument given to a child to play. And the food was so tasteless that I had no impression of having eaten anything for the whole nine months. But I had no rat race, no competition, no ego, no this, no that…!I had a lazy long sleep, nine month long sleep, only kicked the walls of the sack few times to make sure I was alive; Or to show the world that I was alive and kicking.

When I was born I was completely covered with a sticky, jelly-like liquid which though to protect me from infection, was so below the grooming standards that I had to yell at the nurse to clean me up. That was the first instance I showed my diplomatic side to the world; my yelling was taken to be cute and the nurse couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Then I saw her peep into my between-the-leg device and shout, “it’s a boy, It’s a boy!”.I was officially declared a boy, having ended nine month old anticipation.

My journey started from that very day, technically, and it passed through several hairpin bends, patchy roads, shaky bridges, and also through some real beautiful Kashmir valleys ( minus Lashkar-e-thaiba). I made friends, who separated every time my Army officer father got a transfer, slowly dissolving into the boundaries of memory like the sun which disappeared into the horizon and reemerged later into another sunrise, through Facebook or Orkut.

A pristine me, as pristine as the word pristine could define, created after a great effort of nine months in the darkest and quietest parts of the universe, soon got tarnished through layers and layers of data that was forced upon me through years and years of schooling and tutoring…..turned into what I call me, writing this stupid birthday post. A rosy, soft, untainted me, who knew not even what hunger meant suddenly had to cry, having suddenly learnt that only a “crying baby gets the milk”. Thus started my cry, cry for food, cry for attention, cry for love, cry for money, cry for salary raise, cry for promotion….a life of crying.a career of crying.

Then was the pursuit of happiness.  Happiness came to me naturally when I was born, when my mother placed my tiny mouth over her breast, when she touched my coiled and tightened little fingers,  when I was shown a crow, or a cat, when I was given a toy car which moved every time the keys were turned, when she lifted me and rubbed her nose on mine, or even when I wetted my knickers.

But with years belting under my skin, it was tough being happy, or truly happy.It became clear that grinning was one thing but actually being happy was another. Or is it, to quote the chorus of Oedipus:”Call no man happy until he is dead”….

(P.S: Just writing for the sake of writing, I am happy. In fact I was never so happy in life. One can never be happy unless he is content with his life. unless one reflect on life and realize that unless there is night, there is no beauty in a sunrise.)

I Wish myself a happy birthday….