I hate the Happy Birthday song. I can mildly tolerate “baar baar din ye aaye” mostly because yes, it’s going to come again. I specifically despise the Sanskrit version that was sung in my boarding school even though I know the meaning is beautiful - it just never felt genuine coming from the mouths that sung it. And I’ve always carried a little bit sadness with me on my birthdays - which, incidentally, is today. Happy birthday to me!
Last night my partner Josh asked me the reason behind my dislike of birthday celebrations. It got me thinking too, and at this point it’s just a habit. Growing up, my birthday ALWAYS always came during final exams. By the time the exams were over, the 4th was not recent enough to celebrate and not as exciting as the summer holidays. I’ve only celebrated it once after the 10th standard board exams because they ended way early and I was leaving for boarding school 1 week after. Some friends and I went to Essel World (only one of them is my friend now).
In boarding school, they did mass celebrations - one massive cake shared by all the kids every two weeks. Again, not special. But I did find my soul sister through boarding school and we share the exact same birthdate. We’ve only managed to celebrate one of our birthdays together since boarding school - we backpacked through Italy and turned 21 together.
My 18th birthday was one of the best - my mom planned a party that actually panned out as a surprise! I thought I was going for a family dinner (that was always my request for my birthday that the four of us go for dinner together). Instead, it was a hall full of friends from school, college, athletics, Rotaract, and family friends and family from both sides. I truly teared up.
Through college I had a boyfriend that went out of his way to ensure a celebration surrounded with friends. Traditionally, we used to gang up under the birthday person’s house with cake at midnight, and sometimes there were gifts if we could afford them - I didn’t like it. I’ve always wanted to wake up fresh the morning of my birthday. But I went along with it because it seemed to make him happy - not because it’s what I wanted. After we broke up of course, I’d had enough. I would switch my phone off after talking to my grandparents and usually be travelling. After moving to Berlin, it evolved to tiny celebrations with very close friends. Stuff like:
Volunteering in a school for a month
Walk around a small city called Lecce in Italy
Go to Paris with one of my best friends
Have a birthday brunch and board game afternoon
Board game night
Cooked at home during Corona
The first time I felt like truly celebrating my birthday was on my 25th, the weekend after Paris. I called all my friends to a bowling alley, booked it out for the afternoon. Then we went to a brewery to eat and went dancing to our local pub. Why did I celebrate this one? (Trigger warning here for death) Grief will do funny things to you. I just couldn’t shake off this ball of fear in the pit of my stomach that kept saying, if you also die at 50 like your mom then this is your half-way point. So I celebrated, out of fear that I may only have 50% more life to celebrate. I celebrated making it so far, and I will celebrate being 50.
The thing is, I’ve never felt like birthdays deserve celebration. What did I even do? My mom did way more, finally giving birth to me after carrying me for 9 months. So it never made sense to celebrate myself - because it wasn’t an achievement. I’d rather celebrate my achievements so I used to go on dinner dates for my “Berlin anniversary”; that was a decision I made for myself and felt proud of! So that came more naturally to me.
As I was writing this newsletter so far, I told myself this is not a pity party. But it is, isn’t it? It’s sad. It’s sad that I haven’t been celebrated, felt like being born isn’t worthy of celebration, and when it was celebrated I wasn’t even asked my preferences. And how very tragic that growing up I thought only achievements can be celebrated. I’m trying to see it in a different light now. In Marathi, they call it a vaadh-diwas - the day of growth. The day that you’ve grown one more year since last time. I like this version WAY more.
By the time this publishes, I’m sure my phone will be on airplane mode and I will be spending the day celebrating the way I want because I finally have a partner that asked me:
Do you want a cake?
Can I sing happy birthday?
Who would you want around you?
Can I see you?
So we’ll be on a beach somewhere with my cat, watching a sunset, eating fish, cutting cake but not singing the birthday song.
See you as a 27 year old,
Vedi
You do you girl :)
heart and tummy warming hehe ❤️