The birthday talk.
It's never christmas where I stay in. I really have to go watch television or hit the internet to be a part of the collective euphoria or just wait until mom's friends send over some racy christmas cakes wrapped in brown paper, wet in alchohol. I always make it a point to cruise around town for a hint of christmas which almost always means fragile santas on petrol stations with candy you never eat, or really cheap decoration paraphernalia you never use. Christmas is happy and all mistletoe happy around the world, and in my home, because that also happens to be my mother's birth-day.
I'm not a huge fan of birthdays really, but it's just crazy to know that my mom's born on the same day people the other side of the world tell folklore and thrust gifts, add to that Manu's birthday that happens next month, republic day, and knowing that he shares a special birthday trivia with mom hasn't ever gone down too well with me. And so for years I've lied to the ignorant and the sore around me that I was born on labour day, possibly the only christened day in the entire month of may, even if that means it being a passable 30 days away from my actual birthday. I don't know if it was people never really caring about labour day much or that they've always humored me with my self-absorbing trivia , but no one really seems to have noticed the anomaly yet.
Something that's occured to me a full healthy 10 days before my mothers birthday, is if birthdays really are a big deal to the growth of an individual or if they are just another number. Something that Prof. kaushal taught us the sem before the last, and I remember mentioning before how amazing I've found his incredible theories outside the subject of physics,is the concept of latent phenomenon that never sees an apparent happening until much time but there's a drastic change in the system in just one singular step, like the ice-water equation at the boiling point. Is age really a boiling point for all of us to grow, and do we grow in a latent manner the year around only to show as older and wiser individuals on the morning after? Does turning 18 really make an adult out of kids by enforcing a psychological paradigm of conduct in them, ways that they are now supposed to behave in and a lifestyle that they are to choose? Turning 20 wasn't easy for me. I thought it would be one of the things I could really run away from by never talking about, writing about, thinking about, and hence without obsessing about. I wasn't sour about having to leave the teens and somehow deep down inside a part of me really was wanting to enter the 20's and the opportunities that come along, only I didn't want to ruin it by incessantly reflecting and thereby allowing a subconscious structuring of prejudices and a definite to-do list in my mind.
Over time I realised things post the 20th living May 30th, weren't same. I suddenly wanted to grow out of the recluse connotation of being self sufficient and awesome, and somewhere wanted to take a leap of faith in people I befriended over time. I realised that was an act of so much more trust and courage, believing that someone's discretion in making your decisions can outweigh your own, and the suspense of what might happen with such involuntary and passive living, than just weighing things out and calling the shots always. I also realised I cannot wear most clothes anymore, that I wanted a more secluded existence, make a little world without the doors and the windows and lie in it, happy like an old fart.
And I realised, turning 20 wasn't a number for me, it was a realisation, that experiences are to be lived and decisions are to be made differently, that though I might never have to change as a person, the traits in me can really be redefined and relived without the process of questioning who I anymore am. For me it was the collection of infinite experiences and things I learnt over the past 20 years of my life put in a heatful of cauldron, put on a slow burn, until it finally boiled over on my 20th birthday. It was a day to be written about, talked about and obsessed about, and it lightens me to indulge in it today after a half-dozen months.
It's a big day for my mother this December 25th. It's her 50th birthday, and it's a day things and experiences I hope boil for her too, and I hope she comes around new and better the other side of it. I hope we make it big and big enough to remember, and not like my 20th that I thought could be done with by turning a blind eye but developed into an itch that had to be eventually examined and scratched.
I really don't know if I prefer making a big deal out of birthdays, turning them into events and spending them on a high-profile note, all that do know is that we shouldn't let the station pass by without checking if the tanks up for fuel yet.
I'm not a huge fan of birthdays really, but it's just crazy to know that my mom's born on the same day people the other side of the world tell folklore and thrust gifts, add to that Manu's birthday that happens next month, republic day, and knowing that he shares a special birthday trivia with mom hasn't ever gone down too well with me. And so for years I've lied to the ignorant and the sore around me that I was born on labour day, possibly the only christened day in the entire month of may, even if that means it being a passable 30 days away from my actual birthday. I don't know if it was people never really caring about labour day much or that they've always humored me with my self-absorbing trivia , but no one really seems to have noticed the anomaly yet.
Something that's occured to me a full healthy 10 days before my mothers birthday, is if birthdays really are a big deal to the growth of an individual or if they are just another number. Something that Prof. kaushal taught us the sem before the last, and I remember mentioning before how amazing I've found his incredible theories outside the subject of physics,is the concept of latent phenomenon that never sees an apparent happening until much time but there's a drastic change in the system in just one singular step, like the ice-water equation at the boiling point. Is age really a boiling point for all of us to grow, and do we grow in a latent manner the year around only to show as older and wiser individuals on the morning after? Does turning 18 really make an adult out of kids by enforcing a psychological paradigm of conduct in them, ways that they are now supposed to behave in and a lifestyle that they are to choose? Turning 20 wasn't easy for me. I thought it would be one of the things I could really run away from by never talking about, writing about, thinking about, and hence without obsessing about. I wasn't sour about having to leave the teens and somehow deep down inside a part of me really was wanting to enter the 20's and the opportunities that come along, only I didn't want to ruin it by incessantly reflecting and thereby allowing a subconscious structuring of prejudices and a definite to-do list in my mind.
Over time I realised things post the 20th living May 30th, weren't same. I suddenly wanted to grow out of the recluse connotation of being self sufficient and awesome, and somewhere wanted to take a leap of faith in people I befriended over time. I realised that was an act of so much more trust and courage, believing that someone's discretion in making your decisions can outweigh your own, and the suspense of what might happen with such involuntary and passive living, than just weighing things out and calling the shots always. I also realised I cannot wear most clothes anymore, that I wanted a more secluded existence, make a little world without the doors and the windows and lie in it, happy like an old fart.
And I realised, turning 20 wasn't a number for me, it was a realisation, that experiences are to be lived and decisions are to be made differently, that though I might never have to change as a person, the traits in me can really be redefined and relived without the process of questioning who I anymore am. For me it was the collection of infinite experiences and things I learnt over the past 20 years of my life put in a heatful of cauldron, put on a slow burn, until it finally boiled over on my 20th birthday. It was a day to be written about, talked about and obsessed about, and it lightens me to indulge in it today after a half-dozen months.
It's a big day for my mother this December 25th. It's her 50th birthday, and it's a day things and experiences I hope boil for her too, and I hope she comes around new and better the other side of it. I hope we make it big and big enough to remember, and not like my 20th that I thought could be done with by turning a blind eye but developed into an itch that had to be eventually examined and scratched.
I really don't know if I prefer making a big deal out of birthdays, turning them into events and spending them on a high-profile note, all that do know is that we shouldn't let the station pass by without checking if the tanks up for fuel yet.
posted by the turncoat at
12:33 AM
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