Birthday..

Was in Dubai this birthday, with my sister who stays there. She
remembered a little dance jig we used to do when we were small and if any of our
family members birthday was approaching. On her insistence we did that little
dance… I guess after almost more than 25 years. We just used to count the number
of days left for the birthday and dance around each other… like “ its <family
members name> birthday in xyz day” “its <family members name> birthday
in xyz days.”

Now that I think about it, we never used to celebrate birthdays
then. It used to be just chocolates for us. My granny used to make Sheera(sweet
dish) and we used to cut that instead of cake.

Still we carried out that routine dance for every family
members birthday. It was only on reaching college did we actually start having
birthday parties.

Nowadays birthdays are special right from the first one… the
first one has to be massive, even if the little toddler does not understand a
thing. Maximum first birthdays I have visited have always seen the child cranky
because of so much noise and attention around.

Birthdays come and birthdays go, I have celebrated my kids
birthdays with great zeal, only to stop planning once they turned 10. After that
its their choice, how they want to celebrate.

We siblings never had that kind of birthday celebrations, but
come to think of it, don’t even have any regrets or complaints about it.