Bday makes the world realize how old you are becoming. Sometimes the dearth of maturity is alarmed by this birthday and the gifts. Gifts like ‘pencil-eraser, pencil with in-built eraser’ in kindergarten would mean us a lot. ‘Hero pen’ in our 2nd standard means a lot to us, when we got the first promotion of transformation from using HBs to Ink pen. I was arduously expecting my 2nd std so that I can use Hero pen, splash ink on THE GIRLS during every examination hall and after last exams.
Every kindergarten and primary classes have two categories of guys, Cool guys – hard core guys
The cool guys splash diluted ink or sometimes ink with lemon so that the dirt can be easily washed away. The hard core guys splashed ink along with juices from banana tree and its other products to make the stain indelible on THE GIRLS proving their bravery to the class.
Toppers make an exception leaving them undisturbed. Complaining-gals, less scoring gals, gals who don’t share their tiffin boxes were given additional shots.
The ‘Harry potter posters’ in 6th standard, 'football' in 7th, 'Hercules thriller' in 9th…. and ….. the greeting card with ‘open with a :)’ tag in the adolescence. Gifts are not only meant for making our birthday special, rather they form the nitty-gritty of our nostalgic memories.
Bday bumps are exclusively bestowed for all hostélites of boarding school as it was the only means of entertainment for us. Bumps to birthday guys were like medicine feed to a growing child for his/her well being. The birthday eve ….
Mission search and rescue: Every birthday baby (baby is the word coined for every birthday buffalo) have their hide out half and hour prior to the midnight in any possible place of the hostel, such as – under cover of any room that has no connection, store room , stair case, toilets of some other floor. The search and rescue mission starts at quarter to 12. The team will be divided into two as the alpha team and beta team.
Alpha team - with lots of friends who dare to knock other’s doors in the middle of the night and sneak under their bed and closets.
Beta team – who can jump the walls of any heights and can heartlessly bang every single toilet until they hear a different voice. If the victim remains silent for a while then the beta team would dare to jump in (with the hope of expecting decency in return) and rescue the baby for the ‘Operation bumps’.
Operation bumps: Every single katas, punches, kicks, knocks, slippers, brooms and other auspicious accessories would bless the baby, testing all his spare parts.
Mystery behind the bed sheet: (author disclaims responsibility for any unwanted excitements, the title creates) The thinner most bed sheet is used to cover the baby after his warm up. Like in the ‘karate kid’ the baby would be given a Shot-in-all directions training program to improve his reflexes. Pillows and towels were used in this juncture.
Shower: After extensive warm up and other abdominal exercises the baby would be take for a shower.
Now the baby becomes a test piece for all laboratory experiments. Detergent powder from every room, unused tooth paste of some tidy legends, dates, fruits, and whatever available would be mixed to a true solution. Now this true solution is diluted and made into several buckets. The pooja starts with guys splashing it all over the baby celebrating like rituals. This ceremony would go up to 2 pm or until the baby attains Mukthi Nilai, whichever is further.
It was the time we felt relieved from all our board exam tensions and boarding school stress.
Now we got split into several pieces. Some of the guys who threw sand on my bday cursing ‘happy bday da, intha saavu’ with those oxymoronic anxious statements became doctors, beta team guys as engineers, a few as assistant film directors, DRDO, Army, Navy, Managers…....
Punch of the blog:
birthdays are iterative, but
bumps are indelible.
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