Coming of age comes with loss

If I had to choose my favourite day of the year, it would easily have been my birthday. It didn’t matter whether I was 13 or 30, my birthday excited me no end. As a kid, summer vacation marked the start of ‘preparations’ because my dress, invariably, came from Dehradun’s Paltan Bazaar and was a gift from my grandmother, Biji. Never mind that my birthday was in November, the shopping was over and done with as early as that.

The next months went by trying on the dress till it was, finally, my birthday and I could wear it to school.

I grew up a little when I finished schooling and Biji passed away. My mom took over and the preparation shifted to October, when khadi shops offered silk on sale. Every birthday, she added a silk suit to my wardrobe.

I stepped into the 30s, and my mom was gone. I decided I never wanted a silk suit again because its charm went with her. The excitement of my birthday, however, continued. Year after year, my birthday mornings began being about my father coming home with a big bunch of red roses and an envelope with money to allow me the luxury of picking up my own gift. To this, he added a cake the year I turned 40.

My birthdays were still so much fun—full of indulgence and phone calls, flowers and food. It was still nearly my most favourite day, second only to my daughter’s. It would amaze everybody around me that someone my age could make such a big deal about birthdays. I couldn’t ever understand why theirs, for them, was just another ordinary day.

To me, the sky seemed bluer, the sun brighter and the birds happier when the morning of my birthday dawned. I believed the colour of winter setting in, the nip in the air, the crunch of fallen leaves under the feet, all of this began with my birthday.

My euphoria continued right into 2018. The year I turned 43. It was the last birthday morning I waited for, the last birthday the sun was as sunny as my mood. It was also the last birthday dad came home with roses, the last time he wrote a birthday wish on a red envelope. It was the last birthday hug from him, the last wish, too.

As I turn 45, I dread the month I loved so much — the yellow November. It still begins with my birthday but ends with a day that took away the man I loved most—my dad. Though life goes on, it is never the same. Every loss takes away a piece of us. While Biji and Ma’s going away ended my dress days and my silk connection, my dad’s departure cost me what I cherished most — the child in me.

After him, I am nobody’s ‘little girl’ anymore, nobody ever fusses over me or fawns over me, nobody treats me like a princess anymore. I have been forced to grow up. Life is divided along the lines of ‘before’ and ‘after’, since then.

That’s the price we pay for losing those we love, that’s the bane of growing up and that’s how exciting birthdays turn into ordinary days that come to age you a little more!