My near perfect 27th birthday...

I turned 27 today and had a really nice day throughout. I don't quite remember how I celebrated my previous birthday, but this one was a blast and so, I thought it was worth writing about.

For starters my birthday this year was on a Sunday. Now, how can anybody go wrong with a birthday on Sunday!

The day had an ominous start with me managing to pull myself out of bed at 6.15 am (this ain't easy, I swear) for my horse riding class. The riding session went off reasonably well. I did a few rounds of trotting in the training area all by myself. After class, I fed my horse carrots and then stopped by the berry tree to pick a handful for mom. So far so good.

On the way back, I stopped over at my favourite South Bangalore eatery - "Halli Thindi"- and wolfed down a dosa with coffee and packed idlis for home. Once I got home, my cousin called to wish me and suggested we have a get together in the afternoon. I took the cue and asked a few others to join in and voila, everyone agreed! So at noon, a loud, spirited gang assembled at home for a grand pot luck lunch. Lunch was followed by an extended ragging session, where everyone pulled everyone else's leg till we couldn't laugh any more. Then we cousins, played our mandatory round of cricket in the front yard. That was followed by an extended "chai" session that dragged on and on, till no one had anything left to chat about.

Finally, when the cousins packed off late in the evening, I got a chance to open my orkut page and gmail to read the birthday messages and boy, was I thrilled! Every year, I look forward to this. Reading messages from friends accumulated through the years is an exhilarating feeling. Jogging your memory back to the days when those friendships were cultivated is a pleasant experience. I had messages from my high school gang, graduate school buddies, friends from my first job, classmates at the MBA school, colleagues from work. I replied to each one of them with a broad smile that refuses to go off, even as I type this entry many hours later.

Later at night, at the dinner table, dad narrated a funny anecdote related to my birth (there are loads of them, I created quite a stir before arriving). I believe, what happened was that when I was born, my relatives sent a telegram to dad, who was in Nigeria then. Dad's colleague, Mr. Khan, received the telegram and passed on the news to Mr. Sethi. Mr. Sethi mixed up the sexes and broke the news to dad that he had become father of a baby girl! Everyone in office congregated and congratulated my father on having a girl. Plentiful anecdotal evidence was quoted to suggest how having a demure charming baby girl is so much better than having a rowdy troublesome baby boy. Dad soaked in all the compliments and well-meaning parenting wisdom with gratitude. It was only a couple of days later that he came to know that he had had a boy and not a girl. When the news spread in office, a second round of congratulatory celebrations broke out and the same colleagues came and twisted their stories around to prove how a baby boy might be a nuisance, but is so much more fun to have than a baby girl!

As the day drew to a close, there were more calls, SMSes, emails and orkut scraps than I could handle. It's been a nice day :)