My Birthday that went by

Responding to Birthday  Greetings 

14-12-2018

 

I am 77. One's birthday is dear to the person concerned and to his friends and family members. Some celebrate it with great pomp and show while others go about it in simple ways. The latter might involve just going to temple or doing special Puja and perhaps enjoy a festive lunch or dinner. AS you grow older and older, among senior citizens, birthdays are gone through with mixed feelings. On one hand you are nearing the grave and have limited time to live and enjoy and on the other hand you get a feeling: only little more to suffer, much of it is over. I used to maintain a list of birthdays of friends who worked in IDL and send birthday greeting notes via company's internal mail. On one such occasion, one senior officer phone up and told me bluntly: Don't send me BDG and remind that I am nearing retirement! This year's birthday was destined to be festive, for I attended Sri VK Narasimhan's grand daughter's wedding.

 

Many friends may wished me on your birthday via SMS, WhatsApp, Email, Phone, FaceBook or other web portals. There were some commercial calls also. Yesterday, I got a call from a stranger saying she is the secretary of an old age home and asked if I would like to donate some money. I generally get a good number of birthday greeting messages through many platforms. Keeping track of all of them and acknowledging everyone is a task in itself. I usually send a consolidated thank  you note mentioning all persons who greeted me. If I miss out someone he/she feels bad.

 

My memory does not cooperate well these days. I have a friend – Mr TSK Raman. He and I share the same day as birthday. Invariably he phones me early in the morning on my birthday and wishes me. When I thank him he gently reminds me that we share the same birthday. I quickly reciprocate, somewhat with indescribable feeling of guilt. He knows a friend who was born on the same day in the same nursing home where he was born. They greet each other as well.  He has told about this incident also. I too recollect it whenever he greets me on my birthday. I cannot find any answer to questions like: why I don't remember and greet him on my own first? Am I uninterested in people? Am I self centered? Am I the one who does not bother about one's birthday and all my replies are plain courtesy-oriented? Is it a matter of simple forgetfulness?

To such an uncaring perhaps seemingly unloving person, so many people offering birthday greetings is intriguing. As I have always said: I am a 'given-and-kept' (koduthu vachavan' in Tamil) (simply lucky person) and I believe that 'poorva karma' in paying off.   I list of people who greeted as far as I can recall is given below.  Thanks a million to everyone, indeed everyone, who greeted and wished me and blessed me.

 

 

Smt Indira Narayan	Sri Vijay Chandra	Samarth	Sri Raghuraman
Sri TSK Raman	Sri K Krishna Rao	SBI	Sri S Sathyamoorthy
Sri KV Subba Rao	Sri RV Rao	Smt Neela J	Sri VK Rao
Sri P Ramachandran	Sri BN Acharya	Smt Sobha	Justice Rangarajan
Prof V Ramamurthy	Sri A Suryanarayana	Sri Linga Reddy	Smt Kamala Rangaraja
Ms Sheetal	Sri SV Chalapati	Sri IM Bhalla	Smt Vaijayanti
Ms Shweta	Dr Dak	Sri CS Gopalakrihna	Smt Aparajita Suman
Smt Bhagya	Sri V Ram Prabhakar	Smt Dyga Bhagwan	Sri NS Parasuraman
Smt Sarojini	Sri Malleshwar Rao	Sri BA Setty	Sri CS Rao
Smt Srivalli	Sri C Shankar Rao	Sri Sailesh	Sri Laxminarayan K
Sri Bagade	Dr Sundaram	Ramu	Sri Sailesh Mishra
Sri Venkatramulu	Sri Satish, Vasavi	Smt Indu	Sri Anant Waghe
Dr SR  Prahlad	Sri SV Ramana	Prof V Seshadri	Sri RK Savaram
Dr KR Gangadharan	Sri Prabhakar Chalsani	Sri V Desikamani	Smt Nitya
Sri PK Divakaran	Sri PV Satyavratan	Sri Y Markandeyulu	Dr Thomas
Sri Somasekharan	Smt Prema Anand	Sri Kochchaar	32+ in FB

 

Dr P Vyasamoorthy
040-27846631 / 09490804278

http://indiacsr.in/cultivate-hope-happiness-life-senior-citizens/