Frosted celebrations in times of corona

BENGALURU: You often start missing something when you are deprived of it, they say. And the lockdown due to COVID-19 has made me realise the place that we give in our lives to, no, not maids, or booze, or salon visits... but birthdays. Yes, now is not the perfect time to be an Aries. 

Anyone who knows me would be surprised to hear this from me. After all, I almost shrink at the thought of cutting a cake (and I hope blowing candles, like handshake, will become a not-to-do thing post the pandemic). The kids too have grown up hearing from me that there’s nobody in the world without a birthday, and so it isn’t a big deal. 

Since I grew up in a vegetarian family, where even eggs were not cooked — my grandmother didn’t even eat bread — birthdays for me and my siblings, back in the ’70s and ’80s, meant celebrating with homemade Indian delicacies like kheer and puri. Besides looking forward to a new outfit, and the postal money order that grandma sent to each grandchild, the amount going down slightly after she retired from her government job. Cutting a cake and having a ‘party’ never came to our minds.

It changed when I entered high school, and got familiar with Nirula’s and Wenger’s in Delhi, which were then almost synonymous with treats for friends, with their pizzas and burgers being the introduction many of us got to Western fast food. I don’t realise when cutting a rich cake, with ripples of cream and glazed cherries, became a staple for birthday celebrations. Now, it’s hard to think of one without the other. Or even, for that matter, birthdays without restaurant food. 

Not so this year, for those born under the ram sun sign. A friend, whose daughter turned 16 in March-end, said the lockdown brought a jolt to her. “She lives from one birthday to the next, and for her to get some mangoes and strawberries on the big day was almost like her world had come to an end,” she laughed, adding that the daughter has promised to get her mangoes too on her birthday this week. 

But when my son’s birthday approached last week, I was comfortable, knowing that shy boys as they are, who showed discomfort even attending others’ parties in fast food restaurants as toddlers, they have always preferred a homely celebration, with just a cake and some fast food — yes, in that way, they are like most youngsters — ordered in. Coronavirus changed that too. 

I did rustle up a cake, after frantically realising that only a teaspoon of cocoa powder was left and using all my culinary skills to squeeze in chocolate syrup and stir in some melted choco chips. But no fast food, or even donne biryani, this time. Call me too cautious or paranoid, I’m sticking to homemade food during the pandemic. So it was full circle to puri and halwa. 

Thanks to my childhood though, I didn’t miss a cake on my birthday, which comes a couple of days after my son’s. I just picked up a bottle of cola on my way home from work (not all of us are working from home, you see), and said cheers to myself. So hang in there, all you fellow Aries around the world. Stay safe, for better birthdays in the years to come.