Of birthdays and celebrations

I guess it must run in the genes -- like my mother I can never remember birthdays. And it has got to such a point that I am hugely embarrassed when other people remember mine. First of all, I am firmly of the opinion that after a certain age, birthdays are nothing to celebrate. If anything, it is rather a day for quiet introspection and stock-taking. But then thanks to social media and the few friends who 'never' forget, one lands up getting a few wishes by the end of the day, no matter how hard one tries to stop them. My sister-in-law was someone who would 'never' forget a birthday. And she had kept up to her reputation so many years that paradoxically, I had begun to find something very soothing in that certainty. Even if no one else remembered, she would. But last year, even she forgot. And this year, she is no longer there to wish me. Then there are the few people with whom one shares birthdays. With them it was not a question of their remembering, it is just a question of who would wish the other one first, that year. Which is kind of nice, and fun!

The obvious question that everyone asks after having wished you is, what plans do you have for your birthday? My usual answer is -- nothing special,  but this time, I decided to go and be with a dear friend who had just lost her younger sister to pancreatic cancer. Still she had baked a cake; I had travelled more than 6 hours in packed trains to get there. After tea and cake we decided to go for a long walk along the Rhein. We talked about this and that. To be together can be strangely comforting. I hope she felt better. I certainly did. 

I had thought I would spend the train journey looking back at the year that had just ended and take stock of my life. But the view from the train of the lovely ancient castles along both banks of the river Rhein kept me distracted. And then I met two lovely young Indians on the train, purely by chance -- and we spent our time getting to know one another. One was a young girl from Mangalore who had come to Germany to study engineering but had moved on to study theology. She looked happy with her decision, but told us that her parents weren't. The young man worked in a Pharmaceutical company in Ireland, was on his way back to India to sort out some stupid court case into which his arranged marriage had culminated in. He had missed his connection at Frankfurt and was having to wait two days till he got another flight. So he was taking in the sights of Germany. Both lovely and responsible young people, very polite, very conscious of the problems of the world and of their relative privilege. I couldn't have asked for better companions on my birthday.

Last year on my birthday, I told myself that I would never celebrate my birthday ever again. That was after Lalita, one of my dearest friends, died suddenly that morning, and the morning round of birthday greeting calls was soon followed by a second round conveying the awful news. There is something more real about death than there is about birth -- maybe it is just the age we have got to. Moreover one has no memory of  one's birth, not that of one's friends' -- but death, when it happens to people around us, is real, is something that we see and remember. The scene of  Lalita's death last year on my birthday will remain forever etched in my memory and attached to that day.

And there are other reasons too for my not wanting to celebrate, my husband's death anniversary is just a few days before my birthday. And my mother died a few days after. Sandwiched as it is between the death of two of my dearest people, how can I celebrate my birthday? And then as if it was not enough, this year a dear friend also lost her husband on the same day as I did. I think that bond between us of a shared loss will be much stronger than the bond of sharing birthdays or marriage anniversaries. And as the years go by, those sad dates get laden with more sadness, with more deaths added to it every single year. For example, my mother died five years ago. And since then, every year on her death anniversary, I have lost another person who I loved and respected and felt connected to. Is that all a big coincidence? Who can say...?

As the years go by one perhaps has more to look back upon that to look forward to. And then every anniversary comes loaded with the awful thought, who else would we have lost before another birthday comes to pass? One thinks of one's friends who are terminally ill who might not survive another year. But one does not even need that, for even a perfectly fit person can drop down dead one fine day without any prior warning. In that sense, one dread's birthdays for one is then forced to acknowledge the absences along with the presences. Of course looking back can be a happy exercise too. One can also look back and think of the nice things that have happened in the last year -- of the places one has seen, of the things one has achieved, of the people one has come to meet and do things with... 

After all, life, as it unfolds, only reveals to us more of itself -- and once it turns into the past it gets written in stone -- fixed and unchangeable; only the future holds uncertainty, possibilities, expectations, not the past. Birthdays are just milestones in that journey that we traverse till one day our future runs out, and all that is left of the future is just a date beyond which we cannot go. In that sense, birthdays run their course, from one year to the next, seeking its partner, the other date to which it will be eternally coupled once our life has completed its course...and life is the journey towards arriving at that date and all that we do on our way there. Perhaps in that sense, we should be celebrating the singularity and the unpaired state of our birthdays as long as they last. 

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