I think Lucy Larcom said it best - Whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come.
This weekend I celebrated my 26th bday and it was a refreshing change from the past few years that went by. This was my 4th birthday since moving back home from the US of A and it was without any doubt the best of the lot. I distinctly remember how the previous 3 birthdays were spent. (I know there is a certain someone who is going to tease me about my memory but hey, that’s just the way it is)
2006 was spent mostly in bed because I fell sick right after coming home from work the previous day and staying up till 12 am. Sent out the customary “sick so missing work” emails and then it was spent rolling around on the bed wrapped in a blanket with chattering teeth, answering a phone every now and then and trying to muster the energy of showing even the tiniest bit of enthusiasm for the first birthday celebrated back home since 2001 when I had turned 18 and ate chicken for the first time. Not much of a successful follow up birthday there. Anyway, as the story goes had some fam come over at night to cheer me up and we went out for dinner. I was freezing no doubt but still managed to grab some grub and be home before passing out. I was sick for the following 2 days.
2007 was spent not being sick but neither was it spent being awesome. Had a usual run-of-the-mill day at work:- showed up, got my hand shaken by about 30 people, cut a cake, had some laughs, went home a bit early to have dinner with the fam at the same place as 06. It was decent. The highlight was of course going in the morning to a car dealership and booking a brand new car since my earlier one had been stolen couple of weeks earlier. That car was found a month later just before the insurance company would have paid up anyway but that’s a different story. Wow, it’s been two years since my precious black stallion joined the stable – time flew by.
Moving on to 08. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach for about 2 months before the date that things were going to be different this year and how strange but true that feeling was. About 3 weeks before my birthday I found out I was going to have to travel to the US and the zany thing was the ticket was for the 4th of October 08. Yes folks, I had the pleasure and the misfortune of spending my birthday mid-air during without a doubt the longest birthday of my life. The flight took off at 4:00 in the morning and by the time I went through the middle east, changed flights and ended up in NYC it was still freaking 4th of October. I think I had a 27 hr birthday or something like that. Was dead tired when I reached the big apple. Hung out a bit with the fam there, cut a cake (yay!) and was off to bed fighting the jet-lag.
Having missed out on a kick-ass party since my college days 5 years ago I was quite adamant to do something different this year. Age had nothing to do with it. I had no false pretensions that overnight I was gonna turn into something I wasn’t before. I mean, we all hope a birthday will do what the new year’s resolutions fail to do – motivate us into doing something better, as if one birthday will turn into a seismic event changing our microcosm of life. But that never happens, we are still the person we were a day before the birthday. When you think about it, who knows when is a person’s actual birthday every year. Time is what we say it is. The position of the Earth when I was born was completely different than the one this year on the exact same day/time so looking at it from a deeper space/time angle, the funny feeling we get the moment the clock strikes 12 to signal our birthday has begun makes no sense whatsoever. There is no actual proof its my birthday – a calendar used by majority of the world says its the 4th of October in the year 2009 of the Common Era but does that really mean that my body, mind and soul have aged exactly 26 years – absolutely not.
Anyway I was getting sidetracked during that previous paragraph – basically the point of all the previously typed 4077 characters is that this year I organized a party which was different from any I had previously done. I have a history of being involved in parties that people enjoy and remember forever. Exhibit A> New Years 2002. Exhibit B> The Take a Break party 2004. I don’t know why it happens, the vibe is just good I guess. This year was inspired by…. drum roll please HIMYM. I think I’ve waxed lyrical about the TV show How I Met Your Mother enough already so I’ll skip ahead to the what rather than the why?
The concept of Game Night came out of one of my frequent re-viewings of the show and I knew I had both the right audience in mind and the right time-frame to pull this off in. Choosing the crowd was not as easy as I thought. There were tons of people who could have rocked it just as well but I needed people to mesh to create the vibe that can make or break a party. All it takes is for a couple of people who are just not in-sync and the whole evening can come way down. After careful selective processing, the list of about 15 was complete. It’s a tribute to the buzz one gmail thread created that every single person invited showed up. (Yes even CK right before 12 am for a piece of cake and a participation cert.)
The weekend kicked off as is the new custom – waking up at an ungodly hour to play a physical sport and feel productive for the rest of the weekend. Lately for the past two weekends, squash has been replaced by ping pong.. sorry CK. Shopped till I dropped for the parties getting groceries, drinks and stuff. Thanks to the ‘LSE-returned one’ for all the help getting the pieces of the puzzle right the day before. Hosted a friend from the Buffalo days for dinner with his fiancée and had blast walking down memory lane. Clock struck 12 and I still was the same.
Sunday came and made early morning stops to tick off the last remaining bits of pending tasks. Got dressed and went off to see the movie Wake Up Sid – a movie I could really relate to (no follow up questions). Back home, prepared a cd for the party (The OST of Game Night was sadly unused) and then began the slow trek of friends. Started things off with I never, the all time classic ice-breaker game. One half of the room was a bit boring never having smoked or taken alcohol, EVER. You can only be cheesy for so long so the game had to be changed. Guesstures – the charades game was next and was an instant hit. You just had to be in the room to see the level of energy. The teams were set and it became quite close in the end but my team won that game.
Taboo the game of unspeakable fun was next and the sudden change from being allowed to use hands and no speech to only having to talk without motion was tough on quite a lot of people. The game stayed close and had its great moments of controversy and yelling. I seriously had to be the voice of reason and settle most of the escalating arguments.
I had planned not to play but to host the final game which I called Mixed Bag (inspired by my rambling thoughts at 5:00 in the morning the previous weekend). The game contained a little bit of everything and if I thought it would be relaxing as compared to the ones earlier in the evening, how wrong I was. The shenanigans were out of control. There were some really good bits of sketching with the eyes covered and then the sketching contest between two people nominated by the opposite team because they were the weakest “artists”. I gave each of them the clue of Moscow – basically they had to draw the city with the eyes covered and the team had to guess. They both showed innovation – neither went for the Kremlin, tanks or bears and snow as I had thought – one drew moss and a cow (brilliant) and the other drew a mosque, tried to draw the flag of Russia and then showed some snow as an afterthought. But the wackiest art was yet to come. The Moscow round was forked due to the amount of cheating going on. The next thing I gave them was Africa and it was worth it just to see the barren pieces of paper, each trying not to out-draw the other. Eventually the experts took over and the round thankfully ended.
Gave everyone participation certificates and gave some of the key players best-performing certificates. Each was signed by the Game master – me. People grudgingly walked off into the rain, even I was wishing the night didn’t have to end because everyone was having such a good time. The vibe was good.
The pictures came out real well with the action and frenzy well documented. And to top it off it was an alcohol free birthday – prob my first this decade.
All this because as Chili Davis said, Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
