Birthday Blues

Better half hung up the phone her parting shot being an enthusiastic “Yes, surely we will be there”. I was then communicated the purport of the telephonic conversation just concluded the details of which filled me with dread and fear. Oh no, not one of those again! Birthday parties shake the very foundation of my soul.

Generally, I am a man of few fears and knew one less before joining the ranks of the ‘married with children.' Now don’t get me wrong this has nothing to do with children, its not that I hate children or find them obnoxious like some people going around; on the contrary I have always liked them and have a way with them.

Little girls have always been charmed by the dazzling thirty-two which coupled with some friendly and encouraging coos invariably places me on the right side of their favor scale. Ask any baby going around and she will tell you that self is a perfectly good egg in whom complete confidence can be placed.

Birthday parties though are a different ball game, a game in which my handicap is just too much to overcome.

This was not always the case, I distinctly remember a time in life, though very far away, when on being invited to such social gatherings I would happily don my best collar and head with a few friends, who somehow managed to get on every guest list I was on, and would busy myself devouring the dishes which caught the fancy of the palette during round one.

Now that was aeons ago, in a much simpler time when the preparation to go for one of the above-mentioned events did not begin days ahead with hours spent discussing what to gift, the value of the same, which for the uninitiated is a function of:
K * (The value of the gift received * The thickness of the relationship) / The general budgetary constraints prevailing at the time of the occasion.
K being a constant dependent on ones propensity to increase his/her social circle
The times also lacked endless trips to all kinds of retailers checking out every possible item which could make that perfect present. An exercise which invariably results in multiple candidates entering the fray. Once the final selection is made, after long debates on the merits of each, the less fortunate ones are returned in numerous expeditions to the far corners of the city from where they were collected.

Exhausted and tired from this effort one finally makes it to the D’day. For the evening rendezvous there is palpitation and preparations in the air right from the first break of dawn. All plans are made keeping in mind the appointment and everything is supposed to work as clockwork except, somewhere in between there creeps in either a lax hour, an indiscreet siesta or the one of other innumerable ways in which the cosmos conspires to make an otherwise punctual couple become in-fashionably late.

Making past the shrieking kids who greet at the venue the gift is handed to a usually crying baby troubled by all the attention, with the ceremonial “Happy Birthday” and a kiss, in the arms of her mother whose tired smile in-spite of her make up betrays the hard labor she has been subjected to playing the part of a hostess.

One then gets thrown into a melee of unfamiliar and strange faces from which is to emerge a companion for the next couple of hours. If it is not your day then it will be two to three grueling hours of embarrassing smiles to strangers and fiddling with pieces of food and furniture. On the other hand if the goddesses of fate smile there manifests a conversationalist who breaks through the silence barrier and keeps himself and you fairly occupied in between rounds of cold pizza and extra creamy cake till that time when one can make a polite excuse to the hosts and beat it.

The ordeal of a Birthday party makes even the bravest of hearts faint, the vaguest reference of it brings back painful memories and the prospect of attending one would even make Captain Piccard refrain from boldly going there.