Birthday Party at Home

Gone are the days when a kid’s birthday was a homely, kiddy affair. A palpable excitement ran in the air on the big day when cousins and close friends came in earlier to decorate the house. Chaotic happiness pervaded the entire house with the younger ones running around, the older kids twisting and putting up the colorful streamers, blowing and tying the balloons, the ladies of the family trying to bring some orderliness in the madness but eventually giving up and returning to their domain --- kitchen; to feed the ever-hungry battalion of serious doers and the serious loungers and commentators. Except the cake, wafers, patties and fruits, all else used to be home-made from lemonades or the other hot-favourite Rasna, to pakoras, sandwiches, bread-rolls and biryani. Guest-list was always a mix of family and close-friends. Games were conducted by one of the older-kids with an audio cassette twin-player for music.

Cut to circa 2007. Birthday parties are not just birthday parties anymore meant for the kids, they are an important annual occasion. A perfect time and place to network. To win brownie points with the boss, to mix informally with the clients and to keep the important vendors happy. All this has taken a birthday party from being an innocent, fun-filled occasion of kids and catapulted it to a networking ground for the adults. This entails that amateurishly decorated venue won’t do, professionals have to be called in to add that panache which also means that home is not where a birthday party can be organized given the huge invitee list. The birthday parties are now professionally managed with an emcee conducting the games, hordes of artistes like juggler, magician, tattoo artiste, hair-braider, and balloon sculptor to entertain the seen-it-all kids.

I admit I have done it too … for the past three birthdays of my li’l munchkin. It was this year on her fourth birthday which I conducted at home that the sluice gates to the fond memories of my childhood birthdays opened and flooded me with the pure unadulterated fun we used to have. Surprisingly or rather not so surprisingly my li’l daughter was all over herself with excitement at the prospect of decorating her home for her birthday party. It was so unlike her previous ones where we decked up and reached a beautifully decorated venue with everything in place. This time we had to do everything ourselves from deciding on the color of the balloons and the danglers, to blowing the balloons and getting the cello-tape to stick everything in place. She was thrilled to bits holding the stool for me while I climbed on it to stick her “Happy Birthday” streamer. For her probably her mother was up to antics. Rushing around against time and weather (Monsoon decided to be the most generous on my dahlin’ daughter’s birthday), laughing, dancing, sitting on the floor and gobbling sandwiches; somehow somewhere, we --- daughter mother duo transcended all boundaries and were like two kids having the ball of our lives.

Everything didn’t go as per the plan, there were last minute hitches but the children simply loved it. However, one thing that worked out better than planned was when the li’l birthday girl after seeing-off her last guest and all exhausted with days of excitement, rested her head on my lap and said, “mamma next year I will climb the chair and stick red and pink balloons everywhere.”