20th August? Yet another birthday? Shit! What the f**k is going on? How old am I now?
I strongly believe and hence it is fair to say that I do not celebrate birthdays. No “Happy Birthday to you” song, no cake cutting, no candle flame extinguishing, and obviously, no parties. By the way, I must also mention that I do not visit temples to seek the divine blessings of some crazy fictitious entity called ‘God’. A birthday is just another day for me and age, then, automatically becomes a meaningless number.
I fail utterly to understand as to why do people celebrate birthdays. WhatsApp invite, social media invite and printed invitations and all that rubbish – about celebrating a birthday! What is there in a Birthday to celebrate? Are you celebrating the fact that you have moved a year closer to your death? It would be an excellent idea to celebrate the increasing proximity to death through the Birthdays. We do not usually do that because we hate death. We never want to die. Given a chance, we will want to live forever! In our daily lives, death has a negative connotation.
You may say that going to a temple to seek the divine blessings of some crazy God is a way of showing gratitude to Him for keeping you alive. So basically, if God is keeping you alive, you are thankful to Him. But if you were to die, then you wouldn’t be thankful? What shit logic towards your God is this?
“Many more happy returns of the day” is the usual greeting and well-wishing phrase. But what does it actually mean? Does it not mean after many more years (if there were any) you would get old & die? And by someone’s wishing how can you have ‘Many more returns of the day?’ Wishes are, after all, only a wishful thinking. If wishes were to come true, then moon is made of green cheese!
On my birthday or the day, I physically landed on a godforsaken planet called Earth in a remote and utterly obscure solar system – I stopped to think either about past or about the future. Nor do I make any plans for the nonexistent future. I take my life by the breath I take. If I take my next breath, it means I’m alive, present and kicking. Every breath of mine, every second that can exist in time I consider as my Birthday. Thus, my birthdays are being celebrated every second provided that I live that second. “Thus, every second is my second birth”. Don’t you think so?
I have only one friend at any stage of life, that is my death. As I am a close friend of death who is my only ever-faithful companion since my birth, it wouldn’t be out of place to say, “Every second is my second death.” In this sense, I am becoming victorious over death by the second. Don’t you think I have truly conquered death? In a way, I have become ‘Mrityunjay’- the blessed one who has triumphed over death. My friend, death, is letting me win every second out of true love and friendship. This apparent victory cannot happen if there were no close friendship.
For me, my birthday is simply another day. Like all other days of the past, there is a sunrise this day too! The birds as usual will sing and the flowers have bloomed on this day as well. There is nothing special about this godforsaken day.
From the perspective of every mother, I am writing these following lines: If my mother were to be alive, I am sure she will agree with me about her feelings- today is the day my mother must have looked forward to desperately. She will never forget this day because, this is the day she ceased to be plump and ugly looking – became thin again, gained her easy mobility and got rid of the morning sickness. By enabling me to take my first heavy step on this stupidest planet called Earth, she took the lightest step of her life — a step toward eternal infinity.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
