Yet another B'day

Celebrated yet another B’day on 5 April. As a kid I was unhappy about the fact that my B’day always came during the summer holidays and I never got to wear color dress and distribute sweets to my classmates. And finally when I went to senior classes, my B’day was always during my exams!

Once we wanted to know the exact time of my birth for my horoscope, which is considered an absolute necessity for all arranged marriages in Kerala. My mother said that my late father had written the time in his diary (He passed away a few months before my wedding). So we searched the huge pile of old diaries, which my father had meticulously kept. In the 22 year old yellowing diary’s page for 5 April, my father had written, “Harsha was born at 5.15pm and I became a father”. It’s so hard to imagine him as a 27 year old new father. My mother said that the names were ready even before I was born. I was to be Harsha or Preett.

My father would always narrate this story on almost every B’day. I was born in my mother’s ancestral home in Kerala. It was a new moon day, which is considered inauspicious. My father was at work when he heard the news and rushed home. When he reached my mother’s house, he met my grandfather at the gate. Without much enthusiasm, he said, “It’s a girl”. My father did not have a permanent job at that time and my grandfather might have thought that a girl baby was not the best thing to happen under those circumstances.

That was not all – my father overheard some woman say that the baby may not survive. She said, “Poor Chandran (my father), if only he gets to bring her up”. He was really upset. But he said he was confident that I was healthy. He said, “Your cries nearly shook the roof, and that meant you were healthy, but a little too small”. Usually babies stay with their mother, but my father ensured that I was always with him whenever he was around. His concern for my health resulted in my becoming a little too chubby by around 4 months, which I supposedly maintained for around 7-8 years.

Instead of my father telling this story, I narrate this to my kids on my B’day. Now, at the brink of 40 (just turned 39), it feels nice to look back and go back in time.