Thursday, February 5, 2009

Turning 22

I turn 22 exactly when this post goes up. Funny feeling, this turning 22 business. Everytime you cross an extra year, you make plans, you break plans, you bend plans, or do none of that. This particular birthday, I find myself sitting in bed with my laptop, writing a blog post. This is the part where you ask me to get a life and I ask you where to get one.
Over the last two weeks I've noticed a distinct lack of excitement surrounding this birthday. I still can't figure out why, but there seems to be a lack a certain bien etre that most people feel when they add that extra candle. It's also got me thinking of all the birthdays past; the good, the bad, the crazy and the mundane.
Birthdays were simple when I was in school. I was a simple kid. Birthdays would usually entail my school buddies coming over for lunch and then all of us playing cricket in the nearby park till it was dark, we broke someone's window, or for that matter some kid cried because some other kid was cheating.
Then came the wacky birthdays in college. They were quite innocuous to begin with. We'd go out to our dearest Al Bake (it's not a bakery) for our dose of Lebanese food. Then the ominous signs began to appear. First there were the your cake-my hand-your face episodes. Then, as we began to get bored of the place, we decided to make birthdays more interesting by setting bill targets at Al Bake. Very soon, birthday gifts got infected. We began the practice of giving what we called "symbolic gifts" to the birthday boy or girl. For example, a friend of mine nicknamed "Truck" got a Leo Toys dump truck as a birthday gift, another got a jockey underwear set, which he was made to wear in public. Birthday pranks got more and more complex and elaborate, and one would just wait for one's birthday to see what was hurled at oneself. (Below: Birthday casualties)


Now, of course, birthdays are rather sombre affairs, what with the polite Happy Birthday-Thank you routines. I personally used to get a huge kick out of surprising people on their birthdays; I myself never having been at the receiving end of one, so that's a wish I'd like to see fulfilled in the coming years. I loved being 19, hated being 20, and was indifferent to 21. I hope 22 brings along something good. It's one of the most crucial years of my life and I hope it swings the right way.

What better way to conclude than to let my pal Ed Vedder make a birthday wish for me,
I wish I was a sailor with someone who waited for me
I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me
I wish I was a messenger and all the news was good
I wish I was the full moon shining off a camaro's hood
Happy Birthday, SK .
(...and Abhishek Bachchan, Cristiano Ronaldo and Sven Goran Eriksson)

5 comments:

Bupenda said...

Pics are really so lovely....The line "I wish I was a sailor with someone who waited for me" touches me as if "my" still imagining that "angel" has come n touched me,myheart ,my mind,my soul ,my body n indeed my whole life.I m sure that the naturally God gifted child like my great fren,even if he doesn't shine like Ronaldo or some Bachhan in India, he has every birth right to shine like George Bernard Shaw. N yes, for this ,i think he needs to increase his intellectual urge by toning up the sexual desire atleast theoritically if not pratically so quickly....writers r by majority very hot in case of ladies n really dramatically so warm in case of gentlemen n in the case of the both sexes,writers r really so liberally loose to their best possible extent in this free world....G.B.Shaw even declined the proposal of one Miss Universe which truely reflects till today that for true writers who can move the hearts of the world,Miss Universes were ,are n will never be able to fill the void of the life of the writer. How preveliged u r ,my dear fren that u hav taken such a strong pledge to become a writer,u can't be put in the cage of this world where the mediocre prefers to live even by becoming the head of the state also sometime....lastly,its the intellectuals,the writers,the philosophers,the thinkers who rule n shape the world just like Socrates had a student named Plato who in turn produced Alexander,the Great n German philosopher Nitze inspired Hitler to become the Fuhrer. ....Im sure,with ur writing , the world will be shaken towards a new horizon of Light for better human civilization ....May God bless....

Wanderer said...

wow Bupenda! Man you have a post there by yourself!
But thank you for the compliment!

Anonymous said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! (belated :P )

Yea..dont u worry.. things will turn in the right direction :)

Rose's Blog said...

i am sitting at my computer in 2012 thinking that there's more to life than work and school. I'm turning 22 and hope this year will be better than the last. i decide to google it. after all, i had wished 21 was more eventful than 20 and it wasn't. i came across your post that was pleasurable to read. hope you are fine in 2012

Wanderer said...

If it makes you feel any better, I'm 25 now, and I can certify that 22 was really awesome for me :)

Hang in there!