Birthdays, New Year's and other dog ears

One evening, around the time I was 8 or 9, I was super excited for my birthday party. That is when a slow realisation hit me that Bombay was flooded on that particular day. No trains were running, there was water-logging everywhere and probably no one would turn up for my birthday. I think that day, I decided it’s better to just sit by the window and read a book while sipping hot coffee as it rains, birthday or not. But this was just a phase. Over the year, my thoughts around celebrating birthdays did vary quite a bit.

Just after high school, there would be the drill of getting on a video call on a friend’s birthday, and everyone would catch up with what’s new in everyone else’s life. But with time, everyone got busy. The group calls turned into individual calls. Sometimes into texts.

Later, during the early years of when I was in college, people would delegate remembering birthdays to Facebook. Back in 2011, I bet my friend that if he made his birthday private on Facebook, very few people would remember to wish him. Wishes from folks who still remembered your birthday and wished you would be the best ones, right? He was amused when turning his birthday private on Facebook did actually reduce the incoming birthday wishes. He keeps it private to date.

That day, both of us had realised something about how birthday wishes worked socially. Later, whenever he would call me on my birthday he would just rattle off:

सच्ची बात की सफ़ाई क्या दूं।
झूठी बात की गवाही क्या दूं।
जन्मदिन मौत का पैगाम है दोस्त।
उम्र कम हुई बधाई क्या दूं।

— Vikas “3G” Singh

Loosely translated:

Why should one have to justify the truth?
Or even bear witness to a lie?
Birthdays are just a sign of getting closer to death, after all, my friend.
How do I congratulate you about it now?

In between, there was also that one friend who would wish me on my birthday every year, but I had no idea when her birthday was (and then it was too late to ask). Until a few years ago, I’d send her seasonal greetings but never birthday wishes.

Much later, I found a like-minded friend, and both of us actively avoided getting to know each other’s birthdays. We were not that fond of celebrating birthdays as a concept. We’d anyway talk or do things together; wishing a happy birthday could hardly make anything more special. It also looked like knowing birthdays now would somehow make it less special? (I don’t know why, but it seemed like that. Some sort of invisible pressure to start keeping the social niceties of wishing each other on our birthdays this deep into the relationship?).

My disenchantment with birthdays continued with time. In fact, I stopped wishing people after my 30th birthday as a personal policy. My reasoning was it was time that everyone in my closest circles had transitioned into different social contexts. Now anniversaries, spouse’s and kid’s birthdays were more important. Wishing old friends for their birthday just ended up being something people did for legacy reasons.

So, are birthdays useless?

Every year, I see the dates change on my phone and take a moment to feel older in a nice way. Closer to figuring out my life or realising it can’t be figured out. Sometimes, I’m even mildly disappointed if my bank or the few other companies with my personal data don’t email me at midnight.

Some of my closest family members will send in their wishes. I reply, feel happy and go to sleep. On rare occasions, if I’m with any of them, we may just share a cake, reminisce about old times, and then head off to sleep.

But other than these, birthdays also serve as these natural checkpoints - a time to hit reset if you feel like it or maybe try something new. This is also true for things like New Year. Want to change old habits, get in shape, or pick a hobby you always wanted to try? Birthdays and New Year’s are the perfect excuse! Who doesn’t love a guilt-free, regularly occurring restart button? You may not build that habit or work on that hobby until the following year. But you try. It’s fun to know how long that phase lasts. Maybe you got to a few days or even weeks. It’s ok even if you fail at it. The point was not to win the prize; it was to participate. There is always a new year coming or another birthday. You can turn the page and start again if you like.