Answering Birthday Greetings
On
your birthday, if you have many friends and relatives, you will get a good
number greetings, best wishes, blessings etc in the form of phone calls, SMS,
WhatsApp messages, email or in person. Answering or responding to all such
well-wishers politely and without much delay is a pleasant but equally tiresome
task /chore.
A
friend of mine with ‘moderate’ number of friends claims that he got 7000 calls
on his birthday. Might be an exaggeration but answering even 70 phone calls on
a single day is difficult to handle. As one who has joined the octogenarian
club recently, I may narrate my experiences and misgivings. Apart from the
happy feelings such callers shower on us, there are a couple of bothersome
issues as well. I will confine myself to
phone calls here.
Sometimes
you may not be able to quickly find out (fix) who exactly is the caller. If he
says “This is Subba Rao calling” and he is not a frequent caller whose voice is
familiar, I am at a loss to guess which Subba Rao is calling. My incomplete and
‘not-so-well-updated-Contacts-List’ contains more than six Subba Raos.
Sometimes,
on such days, when you get a phone call, you expect it is someone greeting you
and you blurt out “Thank You so much” or “It is very kind of you” etc even
before it dawns on you that you have made a mistake!
You
are so used to replying to phone-based greetings on New Year Day, Deepavali, Xmas
and similar days that you almost always say “Wish the same to you”, “Hearty
Reciprocations” etc – This could happen even when you get Birthday Greetings.
At
times, a few friends start with birthday greetings but may start ‘catching up’
with you with
a lot of info to share and find out since you met years ago. You may just have
no time right then and may find yourself wondering how to escape. Sometimes,
while I am on such a dilemma, I signal my daughter to go out and press the
calling bell. That loud noise heard at the other end is helpful and you can
say: “Someone guests have come so I will call you later” and disconnect. Sometimes YOU may want to catch up with the
caller and he might cut you short in the most unceremonious way, leaving you
wonder why he called in the first place!
But
then there ARE friends who know you will be busy and postpone ‘routine’ and not
so important calls for a further time. There are those who matter-of-factly
want to register that they have called and will be sharp to end the call
soonest. There are some who do not want
to forget and might help you a lot by calling earlier, the previous day itself.
These are WELL-WISHERS in capitals and to all such I bow my head doubly and
reverentially.
In
all above cases you may include she for he. With malice towards none, said all this in plain fun.
Mostly
applicable to senior citizens, known for frailties of their own. He! He! He!
