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V Gangadhar

Birthdays, then and now

In the last few months, Bombay has had its quota of unusual weddings. A wealthy diamond merchant married his daughter off in style aboard a jumbo jet hired for the occasion. The media, which was well represented, reported the wedding in detail.

The diamond merchant hinted that the next family wedding would be under water, inside a submarine. Perhaps he was inspired by Jules Verne's classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea!

Birthday celebrations are also changing. A few days ago, an enterprising couple celebrated the birthday of their offspring in double-deck BEST bus. The guests, all kids, had a ride all the way from north Bombay to south Bombay. They enjoyed the sightseeing, played games and were treated to snacks. The father, fortunately, has not planned to celebrate his child's next birthday inside a submarine!

For years, we organised birthday parties for our two daughters and found the job quite challenging. Today, thank God, we are out of it. One daughter is studying abroad and the other, at 16, says she is finished with cake-cutting and listening to an off-key Happy birthday to you...

Sensible girl! Inviting around two dozen children and packing them into the small drawing room of a typical Bombay flat can be quite challenging. While the birthday kid was quite happy with her new clothes and gifts, her parents had a tough job keeping the guests busy and entertained. And, of course, feeding them.

We did this for several years. But there was the fear that something or the other would go wrong. At our daughter's fifth birthday party, one of her friends coolly polished off three plates of chicken fried rice and commented she had never tasted anything like that. A strict vegetarian, she was aghast to learn that fried rice could have chicken pieces and earnestly requested us not to tell her mother.

Certain types of mishaps occurred without fail. One or two kids would eat too much and then throw up. Party games would become quite noisy and also lead to fights. The star of the day, quite often, was not pleased with the special dress made for her.

Earlier, my wife used to spend days preparing and decorating the birthday cake. Once, she baked a cake which was modelled on Noah's Ark. It was quite a complicated project and she spent an entire night decorating the cake. Next evening, when the cake was unveiled at the party, she expected appreciative oohs and aahs. But the 40-odd guests just fell upon the cake and demolished it in no time, leaving my wife heartbroken. "They did not say one word about how beautiful it looked," she lamented and would not accept my explanation that the speed with which the cake was consumed reflected its high quality.

Boredom is the biggest challenge in a birthday party. Some fathers are experts at organising all sorts of games and take part in them more actively than even the children. I am not one of them. Passing the Parcel bored me, so did Hide 'n' Seek and games like Simon Says.

After some years, the VCR arrived as a welcome addition to birthday celebrations. Get a couple of cartoons and the visiting hordes of children sat quiet, enjoying the antics of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and company. I raised a silent toast to the late Walt Disney.

Recalling those birthday parties, I often wondered if they were not alien to our culture. Were singing Happy birthday to you... and playing games imported from the west the right way of organising these bashes? I don't think so. I think the father who organised that bus trip did a good job. He escaped the ordeal of organising a party and also gave the kids something new.

I have never had a birthday party in my life. It was totally unknown in those days, particularly in the environment in which I grew up. Of course, we did celebrate our birthdays, but in a different manner. As soon as I got up on my birthday, I did namsakarams to my elders and received their blessings. After bath, I had to sit at a special puja as the priest performed what was known as the ayush homam.

New clothes were always presented on birthdays, so was a special lunch with payasam. No one thought of inviting friends for a party or taking kilos of sweets to school and distributing them among the classmates and teachers. The birthday was a simple, family affair and I could not even bunk school as part of the celebrations.

But it had its own highlights. Our parents, somehow or the other, conveyed to us the message that we were something special and how much they loved us. There was always a much-prized hug as we bent down and touched their feet. And if our grandparents were present on the occasion, they usually parted with a silver rupee as the birthday gift.

Normally, whenever we received any cash, we were expected to surrender it to our parents. But the birthday 'earnings' were different; we were allowed to keep them and blow them on sweets. Once the birthday lunch was eaten, the celebrations were over and life was went to normal.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier