How I spent my 24th Birthday

I was born on the 3rd of August 24 years back. Birthdays hold a distinctive place for almost everyone; it makes us feel special after all, and, at least on this day we want to celebrate being alive. We have been conditioned since childhood that birthdays are the day to celebrate. We have seen birthdays being celebrated for us and others and naturally, our birthday is associated with us and by us as our joy day, the day which means the most to us, and as its date nears we start waiting eagerly for it to arrive.

As a child I always wanted my birthday to be celebrated, a day I could rejoice on. But, my birthdays were not celebrated in the same festive mood as I saw my friends’ were celebrated. There were no parties and no hype although just like any normal kid craving attention, I too wanted a celebration for the fact that I was born and living.

Years passed by and each year I expected something wonderful to happen to me on my birthday, some beautiful gift like a book being gifted to me but it never happened. Papa didn’t believe in all that and mummy was left with no choice.

Due to my family’s quarrels, the day of any festivity like my birthday, Holi, or Diwali used to become a day on which I was left with no reason to laugh and be happy and weirdly for continuous eight years of my life, I used to be disappointed and heartbroken or sad on every occasion of such festivity. For those eight years I have cried on all my birthdays, I have felt sad on all the Holis and Deepawalis just because there was no joy in our house which I could feel. For most of my life I have not celebrated my birthday and now the need to celebrate it in the conventional sense too has disappeared. I do enjoy my birthdays but I celebrate them in a different manner now: by giving and giving gives me joy.

So, this birthday I’d planned to visit an old age home for the first time in my life. I have never been to old age homes, orphanges, blind schools, and animal shelters but I want to visit them all and serve there, so, I searched for a genuine old-age home and decided to celebrate my birthday there by sharing cakes and samosas to the residents.

I found one genuine home for destitute women. There were eighteen women residents and three nuns to look after them, so, I went there packing the cakes and samosas accordingly. Some of those old ladies were ill, or had some peculiarity about them; one of them was continuously shaking, one had a deformed face and one had a big dark mark under her left eye. Seeing them my heart melted and I could feel nothing but empathy for these women. I wanted to know their life story but I couldn’t muster the courage to ask because it would have been rude. I kept quiet and kept wondering. 

I shared the food with them and asked for their blessings by touching their feet, then I came back to my place, and wrapped up the day by replying to incoming good-wishes over texts and calls. My father himself said to me later that he too should be doing something like this on his birthdays. It was a good day spent.