Celebrating Friendship #03: A Birthday like never before or ever again!

I had always known I was born lucky and I could list out numerous reasons as to why. One among them is that, over the period of 23 years I have existed on this planet, not one birthday of mine has gone unnoticed and I consider that one of my life's blessings. Every year, on my birthday, people who loved me and I loved equally back, would unfailingly ensure that their wishes reached me in some form, be it a simple smile or a text or a phone call or a gift or whatnot. I have never understood why but my stomach would lurch with pangs of raptures whenever these people made an effort to let me know that they remembered my birthday. I would feel so damn special, like I was what mattered the most on that specific day and the whole world, as I knew it, depended upon my happiness.

While each and every birthday that has passed by til now has been ecstatically memorable, my mind ever so continuously kept questioning me about the birthday that I would pick as the best of all. As humans, do we not tend to harbor favorites in even the tiniest of insignificant matter in our life? When that is the case, how could I not have one birthday memory that burned brighter than all others and eventually became 'A Birthday like never before or ever again'.

This particular birthday that I am inclined to term as my favorite happened when I, not so successfully, completed the 20th year of my existence. At that point, I was in the third and final year of my under graduation, about to acquire a Bachelors degree in Commerce. Forget what I studied or why I even studied what I studied, the most important thing was that I was nearing the end of a phase in life, which had required me step out of the safe haven my family kept me in and learn to take a few independent steps. Soon, I would be starting a new phase all over again(otherwise known as PG, again something I still fail to grasp the purpose it has served to my life). Like every other college grad, I realized that it was my friends whom I would miss the most out of this three years. With them beside me, life had been a breezy sail. Indeed, throughout our final year together, I had to get through frequent depressive fits before coming to terms with reality and face all our final congregations with a big smile.

As if wanting to make sure that I did miss them in the years to come, if not more, my friends - the brats, went a step further to give me one final awesome birthday together with them. Of course, it was a surprise party at a friend's place! Think about your favorite color and now, imagine walking into a room that has a life-sized princess cake at the centre(with the princess wearing a ball gown of your favorite color), all four sides of the wall adorned with balloons of your favorite color, and a huge table upon which lies an army of gifts wrapped in your favorite color. Indeed a WOW moment, ain't it? Now, let the color be GREEN(I'm a green-maniac), and that is how my best-ever birthday looked like.

A picture is worth a thousand words and the snaps shared are just a few frozen moments from a great day. More than the cake or balloons or gifts, the sight of seeing all my friends turn up for the party dressed up in different lovely shades of green was overwhelming. That day, I knew, I could try a hundred different ways to express how I exactly felt on the 18th of August in 2011 but still fail over and over again. One may ask, why would I chronicle something that happened nearly 4 years ago? Well, you never really forget some moments or the people you meet in your life, how much ever you try to. Time and again, they would keep coming back to hit you with the sweetness of nostalgia and I chose to write about it, letting my friends know that I still miss them terribly.

Maybe I would grope on through life and cross many more birthdays but I would never able to forget this First of Bests! Lovely were the moments we shared and they still stay inside me, spreading warmth like a freshly baked cookie :) !