Tomorrow (jan. 13th) is my 94th birthday, and it has become fashionable to have a birthday blog now a days (mostly written by friends) ,,, as my existence here is hardly noticeable , I don’t fancy anybody writing it for me now, so as to save me the blushes I thought about writing one Myself!






















94th?.. Yes!   ninety fourth!!, and it is only a matter of fact that my 93rd was only a few days back!. To make it clear for some one who is still in dark, most of the hindus here have two birthdays every year.. first one or the 'Piranal' is meant for the family.... in my case its on the first 'Rohini'* of 'Dhanu' month of Malayalam calender. To be frank , no one except my mom has some idea about when my piranal is going to happen every year because the mobile phone calenders and the beautiful glossy calenders which drug companies offer don’t have the rohini or dhanu in it.. . It’s a bit surprising to know that after 1976 , never did a January 13th and the 1st rohini of dhanu coincide, so I had two separate birthdays every year..

                                                                       Jan 13th the original date which I landed on this planet, exactly the time when my brother was celebrating his first birthday. (my parents were spot on!..). I still doubt whether it was a precisely calculated move to cut down on the expenses of birthday celebrations in our middle class life. So on Jan 13th we used to have a shared / common birthday party , not like the ones you see in hindi films.
  Both of us get new dress with same pattern,, ,,,,,,yellow shirt with a blue bird printed on right pocket, stone wash jeans with 10 pockets . the 'kiyo-kiyo' shoes…, Elvis puff.. beauty spots,, then to the local studio for annual photoshoot.. two pictures every year, black and white....one with me in mom’s lap and brother in dad’s then next the other way round, then to local cinema and dine out. That was the ritual in preschool days..

School days.. things were slightly different..… Color dress.. again same pattern .. more pronounced Elvis puff, (we called it Kuruvi kudu , meaning sparrow’s nest.) And the most important item was the toffee packet ! . The Parry's milk toffee with a green wrapper ..two apiece.. i had once fought a lost battle at home demanding mom to buy me éclairs packet rather than the boring green candy..

Our class had only 30-35 students so the remaining 40 odd sweets in my bag after the distribution ceremony and 'haaappeeey Birthdaaaaye too00 yuuUUU'  pandemonium always made me a VIP during the break hours and in the schoolbus on the way back home .. I always took special trouble to make sure that Madhu and Georgey didn’t get any additional allowance and Deepthi, Manju , Jyothi ,Rekha.... got an extra toffee from this color-dressed -elvis puffed -dashing -birthday - boy!.
No photo shoot .. no movie, occasional dine out!.. an extra hour of play and television.

How 94th ? well..94 = 33 plus 33 plus 28 …

Its another story..ever since after the age of five I’m having one more birthday.. the Official one!! Its on 28th of may! . the credit for such a beautiful thing goes to my grand mother… she was the one who took me to school admission because my parents were away that time.. I guess birth certificates were not compulsory at that time and because of reasons only known to her she gave the date of birth as may 28th.. .


so let me sing ……happy Birthday to me!




p.s

Thanks fropper team for the surprise gift! I wasn’t aware of a contest going on.. special thanks to every one who commented on my daughter’s pic.





Rohini nakshatra-- shared with me by none other than lord Sreekrishna.


Elvis - puff.. hairstyle which was common in kerala in 1970s, made popular by actors like Madhu and Vincent...   usage made popular by arundhati roy in God of small things

kiyo- kiyo shoes.. jargon coined by us referring to the Squeaky shoes of toddlers.

Tags: who said 13 is unlucky?