Does it ever drive you loopy simply how briskly the birthday modifications?

I lately had my birthday. Or to make use of the extra apposite Indian-English, my ‘glad birthday’. It’s this ‘glad’ factor I discover troublesome internalising as a middle-aged man. To elucidate, I’ll check with one of the basic Hindi motion pictures made in the previous few a long time. A Mithun Chakraborty starrer by the identify of Basic – Dance of Love. In it somebody needs Mithunda ‘Good Morning’ to which he solutions (he’s strolling in regards to the road in tattered garments and manacles – don’t ask why) in a thundering voice filled with angst and anger: “What’s so good about this morning?” Equally, what’s so glad a few birthday?

After I was younger, I completely understood the happiness. Yearly I used to be transferring nearer to the enjoyable a part of life: Transitioning from half-pant to full-pant, being given the suitable to shave and preserve a stubble, permissions to remain out late, and perhaps even go on a visit to Digha with associates.

I used to be celebrating, with every birthday, extra independence: My very own room, licence to look at grownup motion pictures, to look at grownup motion pictures in my very own room, driving, romancing, transferring away into my very own place, until lastly I used to be free to take all selections of my life. No surprise it was associates and presents and balloons, hoping not one of the presents have been duplicates. Every birthday was glad as a result of each represented a lessening of restrictions and strictures. Now it’s precisely the alternative.

Every birthday to the middle-aged man represents the passing of yet one more milestone on the freeway of life, a milestone that claims ‘you’re one 12 months nearer to your dying.’ You’re manacled, like Mithun Chakraborty in Basic – Dance of Love, by the progressively tightening chains of portion-control, carb-control, cholesterol-control and blood-glucose-control. And issues will develop worse as I transition inevitably to outdated age. I’ll have much less freedom to do what I would like, my joints will restrict me and so will my kidneys and my coronary heart and my eyesight and my reminiscence, until I’ll wind up the place I began. Whole dependence.

To place it one other means, when one’s birthdays are glad in youth, you eat as a lot cake as you’ll be able to, and after they aren’t glad any extra, you’re taking the smallest slice and publish the image on Fb. Why would you have a good time one other flip of the earth whereas on this path? Having stated that, do bear in mind to want me ‘glad birthday’ subsequent 12 months.

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