Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Mark Twain.
A little over a month ago, I celebrated my birthday. On second thoughts, celebrated would be overstating the case at my age. Let us just say I marked the day quietly without fanfare, listening to some good music and reading an improving book. As a treat, my wife and I lunched out unostentatiously at a decent continental restaurant just round the corner from where we live. ‘A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me,’ in Omar Khayyam’s quatrain from the Rubáiyát about sums it up to a nicety. That would have been just fine and dandy as the day drew to an uneventful close, not counting all the shenanigans in the rest of our country and the world over. However, ever since I decided some years ago, probably unwisely, that I should be an integral part of the social media community, even though my participation might be minimal, I have had to face a new kind of challenge. Let me quickly add that this challenge is not unique to me.
In order for you, dear reader, to better understand my predicament, let me try and express myself with numbers, since most of you are extremely numerate. On this birthday of which I speak, I received 73 good wishes from Facebook visitors, and as many as 87 greetings on WhatsApp. A further 28 was accounted for by email. Nothing worth talking about from X (Twitter). I am not much of a twit. Should I receive that rarity of rarities, a greeting card nestling in a stamped buff envelope delivered par avion with a personalised message penned by the sender, I shall have it framed for posterity! Other cards with pre-printed quotidian, saccharine messages leave me untouched. Fine words butter no parsnips, as some clever bloke put it, when they come from an assembly line.
Lest I forget, a couple who are close friends, actually called me on my mobile and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in an unidentifiable raga. They meant well, though I had to hold my mobile a good six inches away from my left ear. Many of these messages were accompanied by lavish downloaded illustrations of bouquets of flowers, animated gifs and much else that are so readily and digitally available, literally at our fingertips. I daresay many of you would be muttering to yourself, ‘You should look at my numbers buddy, compared to which yours is a mere piffle.’ That is perfectly alright. I shan’t quibble. It is the principle that I am more concerned with. Now here is the thing.
How does one respond? Does one respond at all? If I were to parse those numbers down further, 80% of the Facebook greetings were from folks I have never met, nor am I likely to. On WhatsApp, the situation is better. I would say as much as 60% of the well-wishers were well known to me. To all of them one is ever so grateful, even if they were digitally reminded by unseen hands. After all, there are many birthdays that would have almost certainly skipped my mind had it not been for timely reminders flashing on my mobile. It is Sunil’s birthday today. To those that know me, even if only slightly, I take the trouble to respond with a custom-made response. A ‘namaskar’ emoji, while useful oftentimes, is the lazy way out while acknowledging or thanking friends and relatives. Not that I don’t take recourse to it if push comes to shove.
Known or unknown, receiving birthday wishes from human beings is one thing. An avalanche of greetings over email and WhatsApp from inanimate banks or financial institutions, apart from the ones you actually do business with, mutual fund houses who have collectively and substantially eroded my hard-earned savings, ditto for hospitals, vehicle brands, restaurants I have patronised and not to forget, a handful of charity organisations to whom I might have (in a weak moment) parted with a modest sum and who hope against hope that I will unburden myself of my meagre treasure chest once more with feeling. To all of them, I give the lofty ignore. To begin with, it is too much of an effort and furthermore, it will remind them to come back for a bigger touch next time round.
I think you get my meaning. This is an existential dilemma each one of us faces. Unless, of course, you have decided to be a monk and are living out your life contemplating the infinite on a mountain top or in a monastery. I know of a song where the singer with a philosophical bent talks about chopping wood, carrying water and wondering what the sound of one hand clapping is. If you belong to this category, then you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Mind you, on occasion, and here I am thinking about my wife’s birthday, her former employer, bless him, never fails to send her a large bouquet of fresh peace lilies along with a bottle of the finest red vino and a gooey chocolate cake – every year without fail. Truth to tell, on that date, more than her I wait anxiously all morning for the doorbell to ring. And the bearer of glad tidings always rings twice!
As an aside, I would like to dwell briefly on how birthdays are celebrated in Bollywood and Indian pot-boiler films in general from time immemorial. The cake is a must with the requisite number of candles, children being the first choice, followed by the candle-blowing ceremony, cake wedges being first bolted into the waiting, salivating mouths of Mummy and Daddy, the invited guests wishing the boy or girl ‘Happy “birday” Nisha or Rahul,’ as the case may be. The grand finale is the happy “birday” song in which everyone joins in while someone strums ham-handedly on a guitar or pretends to tickle the ivories on a grand piano. If I have witnessed this sequence in one Hindi or Tamil film, I have seen it in at least a hundred movies. If the director wishes to inject a dash of bathos into the proceedings, he will cut to a nearby hutment where an indigent family with four children are trying to keep the wolf from the door. At which point, the song will also turn maudlin. To paraphrase an old folk song, ‘It’s the rich what gets the gravy and the poor what gets the crumbs.’ Time for our handkerchiefs to come out for some eye-dabbing and, at times, nose-blowing if the unfolding tragedy is overwhelming.
All this is a far cry from the way my parents, and I am harking back to the 60s and early 70s, acknowledged their children’s dates of birth. The trigger for my father was when he opened the newspaper at the crack of dawn, while sipping his filter coffee and happened to notice the date of issue on the masthead. At which point he will turn to my mother and say, ‘Do you know what date it is today?’ My mother, having been disturbed over whatever morning chores she was occupied with, would peremptorily ask, ‘How do I know? Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary? Why don’t you just tell me? I am busy.’ My father, not put off by the rebuff, would tell her that it is her second son’s birthday and that she should prepare something sweet to mark the day. The fact that her second son is hundreds of miles away in a boarding school or in a corporate house he has just joined as a management trainee is neither here nor there. At least my Appa, a diabetic, could enjoy the forbidden payasam for one brief moment. To be fair to my old man, I would invariably receive an inland post card from him, wishing me on the occasion. The post card would have arrived a few days after my birthday, but what the heck. It’s the thought that counts.
That was another world. We are in the here and now. Everything has to be instant, not just your coffee. If it is your birthday, take a deep breath, sit back and stare unblinkingly at your mobile phone for the best part of the day. Keep a bottle of Refresh tears handy to take care of your dry eyes, while simultaneously working out how and if to respond. Better still, you can follow the advice of this modern sage, ‘My phone battery died faster than my social media birthday notifications today. Thanks for the love, everyone.’
Published with permission from Suresh Subrahmanyan – A long time advertising professional, now retired, and taken up writing as a hobby. Deeply interested in music of various genres, notably Carnatic and 60’s and 70’s pop/rock. An avid tennis and cricket fan. Voracious reader of British humour and satire. P.G. Wodehouse a perennial favourite. He blogs at – https://sureshsubrahmanyan.blog/
