Birthday memories - 5th September

I turned 61 this year – slowly creeping towards the awesome ‘70s’.  Wishing by friends and close ones are nowadays done through the mobile and of course face book!  No more eagerly waiting for birthday cards (didn’t matter what age you were!) or crowd of loved ones trooping in towards evening to usher you into the new year. 

One memory distinctly stands out from my past birthdays.  It is 5^th September, 1960.  I am 8 years old today and have many things to do like wear a pretty dress to school, distribute sweets to all, go and pay my respects to my dadu and then get ready for the party in the evening.  Here I am early in the morning standing in front of the two-storied henhouse in our courtyard while I hold the birthday card I received from Baba.  He sent it on time for my big day all the way from somewhere in Europe.  Baba is on a tour of the European countries on work; he is with the British High Commission in Calcutta.  The card has a little girl amidst a joyful farm filled with hens, ducks, pink pigs, cows and the morning sun glowing down on them. 

September 5^th, 1996 Aurangabad, Maharashtra was a heart-wrenching birthday that will be etched inside me forever.  They were pretty hard days - we survived on 2-3 spoonful of sugar a day for quite some time.  Somehow my daughters managed to purchase a tiny plain cake from the mobile cake man who did his rounds every evening under our apartment.  Come midnight 4^th September my children gave me the best birthday of my life!  A tiny leftover candle from previous years burned triumphantly that night as evidence of pure love – our love for each other.  And I was deluged with handmade birthday cards – so lovingly crafted with crayons and sketch pens on the pages of an unused old diary. 

5^th September is celebrated as Teacher’s Day in India, in respect of Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan’s birthday (our ex-President).  Dr. Radhakrishnan was primarily an educationist and so his birthday is honoured by Indians.  When I was growing and celebrated my birthday by distributing sweets to classmates and teachers on the 5^th September, I childishly felt I was somehow connected to the great man.  I even found out his address in Madras and wrote him a letter mentioning how we shared our birthdays.  Many days later when I received a typed card with his signature my joy knew no bound!  Such an esteemed and honoured man took the trouble of replying to some silly child in Calcutta.  How superbly humble!