The Birthday Girl

Birthdays have been overrated in my opinion. Be it Harry Potter or Gandhi Jayanti, people have a fixation towards making a day represent a person's life or any big change in it. Perhaps as kids we are introduced to the concept of a birthday being special by ladening us with gifts. Back when I was in school, my parents had brought me up in a way to not expect any great gifts. So the only thing that made me wait for my birthday was the small celebration that happened in my class. Normally, in the class, the birthday kid would come in his or her favorite clothes and then the class would sing a birthday song for him and as a reward, he would distribute toffees to all the kids in the class. The bonus was that you could skip the boring class and go to distribute toffees to all the teachers in all the other classrooms with a friend who would assist you in this daunting task. Needless to say, the position of the assistant to the birthday boy was the most sought after.

It was never the procession that attracted to the birthday in school concept. It was something completely different. I was very lucky to have my birthday on a particular date, on a date that some other kid in the class also had a birthday on. The other kid in this case happened to be the most sweetest girl in my class. To say she was extremely pretty, would not be true, I think there were prettier girls around, but it was just that she was so sweet. I am at loss of more adjectives because sweet fits the bill oh so perfectly. Her smile could lift everyone's spirits up. Her voice wasn't really the girly types but a more muffled one, but it was an imperfection that made her all the more perfect.

She was the kind of girl I was quite sure, every boy in the class fancied, some were open about it, others like me would secretly wish she could be theirs. At the time her popularity peaked, I believe that there were guys in 3 years above me and 3 years junior to me that were after her.

And on my birthday, or shall we say our birthday, one of us would wish "happy birthday" and in reply the other would simply say, "Same to You". I would wait for the day to come and the familiar procession to begin, and after distributing toffees to the kids in the class, we both would ignore the incessant appeals from our friends to take them out for the walk to all the classrooms. We would assist each other and both, alone go around the school to every classroom. Those were the moments I cherished the most about my birthday. Walking around the school with her dressed all pretty (and I looking better than before atleast) making jokes on our way, talking uninterrupted and doing the "same to you" joke again and again. It was fun.

The teachers we would hand over toffees to also perhaps noticed a glint of extra happiness on my face and would comment on how good we looked together. My face would light up like a bulb outside the operation theater, but really I would feel elated. We would pretend to not care about our teacher's mischievous remarks and act nonchalant. She was in my class everyday in the school but on my birthday it seemed that only I shared the special bond with her.

This happened for 3-4, wonderful, years and finally she left the school. She was the darling of the class and the girls loved her equally. In fact once we had a competition of sorts of who was the most popular guy and girl in the class. Every kid had to make two cards and give to his or her best friends. The guy or girl who gets the most cards would be given a special gift from the class teacher. Needless to say, she won the girls' leg of the competition, but incidentally, as fate had it planned, I came out to have the most number of cards among guys (maybe because of the fact that most boys were absent that day). Although her number of cards were more than double of mine, still it felt nice to be level with her on some plane. When she left, announcing suddenly that she would no more be in our school from the next day, all the girls cried out loud in sorrow, all the boys more discretely. I had brought a gift for my friend that day, but we all agreed that since she was leaving the class she should be given the gift on behalf of the boys in the class. The gift was a book and I still remember how bad I felt when she left and only to take solace in the fact that it was my gift that she got finally.