Disclaimer: This is a pure fictional story based on real incidents. All the tigers in this story are completely fictional and bear no resemblance to any of the living, dead or extinct tigers. Any such resemblance shall be taken with a pinch of salt and if possible pepper too.

I have started believing more and more that writing humor is a bit of uphill task; may be because of my handicap in maintaining my genre as satire/humor. I keep hopping on and off my style trying odd stuff here and there. This often leaves my audience confused (though the poems which I recently wrote may instill laughter, you cannot call them as humor; even if you call them so, don’t tell me OK?)

 My point is that, I like to laugh at whatever life throws at me; though this is a very innovative thing to do, you always are at risk of being called loony and all. So when I write stuff like “the other day I almost had a fracture on my hip bone when I tried to kill a mosquito”, and get comments like “Oh man! I am so sorry, how is your hip bone now?” I will have to look at myself in a rather pitiful manner.

 So when I decided to write about a day in my life, I thought I would rather comfort my audience by making it clear that I wrote the stuff to sound funny and all. So later in this article if you are at an ethical dilemma of whether or not to laugh at the protagonist’s sorry state of affairs, feel free to bring out that sadist in you to rule the roost and have a comfortable laugh, no seriously!

So here we go-

 It all started by twelve midnight or so. I generally have few expectations from life, at least, so I claim. But, it is difficult for me to hide excitement when I come into lime light and all. Just at the right moment, my heart starts making sounds like an old refrigerator- making continuous humming noises, sometimes which end up vibrating me to the effect that people think that I am sick!

 So when that night, when I knew something I did before would bring me to limelight, I was being my quintessential self. It was past midnight and I never remembered staring so much at my phone (though the lady who sits opposite to me at my workplace has other opinions, no not about my phone though). If I was a beggar and my phone was an average person crossing the road, the stare would have earned me at least fifty rupees or so! You get the picture right? I was looking at my phone with my most pitiful face ever. My acne just helped my cause.

 I did not know when I slept off that night but knew when I woke up, as my heart became the refrigerator again- making those humming noises. Before I could realize what was wrong with me, memory dawned.

The problem my dear reader was that last year on my birthday when I was sitting hopeless and disinterested, like a young calf waiting for its mother to come back, expecting hardly anything but a few calls from my closest friends, I’d received some hundred odd calls from all corners of the world wishing me a happy birthday and all sorts of things.

Though I was on roaming then, I was more than happy to use my high end Nokia for its main purpose-TALK (yours truly has an indelible affinity towards high end phone and ends up using them for anything except talking, creating a serious identity crisis for phone). Though my heart sank to deeper depths when I had to pay the bill, I never repented.

So for this birthday in order to save those extra bucks spent on my roaming bill, I’d made it a point to stay ‘local’ in spite of the fact that it was a weekend and was all set to celebrate my birthday in a cost-effective manner. And this, unfortunately or fortunately for me, turned out to be the anticlimax for the year long, nonexistent, birthday bash plans. I will tell you why.

Among many mistakes done by the God, one mistake is to schedule this year’s birthday on a weekend. For an average SE weekend is the biggest festival. One might forget his girl friend’s birthday, his wife’s birthday, for that matter, even his own birthday, but one could never forget the weekend. So in all the weekend excitement my birthday was sidelined like a pedestrian on Indian roads. As expected, no celebrations happened for me; no cakes cut, and there by nothing was applied to my face and hair, thereby increasing the life of a few wisps of my hair which are always eager to succumb to gravity, or so they seem!

I will pass on briskly and will excuse you with those details of how I flowed in and out of my bathroom and got ready, only to go for a breakfast. It was when I was forcing myself to enjoy a plate of pale yellow poha (a preparation made of rice flakes) that my phone started ringing.

Within a moment I felt like a digital camera which has been shifted from night mode to vivid color mode. The pale yellow poha turned bright yellow. The sun seemed more beautiful, flies looked like butterflies and the glass of chai looked like coke. It was Nikhil, my roommate.

Me: Hello

Nikhil: Where are you?

How does that matter? You tell, you tell (I repeat my sentences when I am extra excited)

Tell me where you are

(Thinking what has that got to do with wishing happy birthday) I am having breakfast. Why?

Could you get me a packet of Dove soap, blue color pack?

I hung up instantly. The poha returned to its pale yellow color, the sun started scorching and the flies started irritating me again.

Things remained particularly unchanged until noon and I started feeling like the watchman of an unused ATM in a remote village of Bihar. But not after my phone started ringing again. It was Little Johnny (name changed to protect myself). Before actually going any further, I will have to quickly introduce Little Johnny to you.

Little Johnny, if you do not know him, is more remarkable for his irritating manners than anything else. If a naughty child has ever met Little Johnny, all you need to do to put the child to task is to tell him that he will have to meet Little Johnny (LJ). You get the drift right?

LJ’s figure would just help his cause. He is five feet six inches high and would give you a feeling that he must be as wide. When I first met LJ, he already had this notorious popularity of being the most irritating moron within the measured kilometer radius; it did not matter where he was. But my sphere of influence being 2 km, I was able to gel with him very well. The science ladies call it ecological niche or something like that. But sooner I evolved as a better human being and reduced my irritating sphere of influence to a few meters. But LJ persevered with all the conviction of a determined soul and I avoided him as much.

So when I saw that it was LJ calling me, I was in double mind. I knew answering the call means putting your finger into a plug hole to test electricity. No sane person would ever dare to do that, but in the kind of situation I was in, risk is a biscuit. I was ready to watch MTV girl talk incessantly if someone wished me and so I answered the call.

Hello?

How are you mate?

Oh yeah, fine so far. I mean, yeah! Fine.

Where are you?

Home (how does that matter, wish me you moron!)

You know how to configure outlook?

 Configure what?

Outlook.

An unsuspecting onlooker would have undoubtedly betted his month’s salary on a claim that I was a chameleon. Yeah, on hearing this I turned scarlet red, then a tint of pale yellow and then may be of paper white, before restoring to my skin color.

The next 30 minutes were the longest of my life; of course, only if he doesn’t call me on my next birthday to ask me how to brush his dog’s teeth or other such interesting things. I shall agree that, at this moment, I hated myself more than anyone else did or could do.

Time flew and my plight deteriorated. It was pathetic. It was like the whole universe has conspired and erased my birth details from each and every human brain ever lived. There was me, who was determined to be wished on my birthday and there was rest of the world who seem to be ruthlessly determined to not to wish me. And nature seemed to be with the rest of the world.

I almost decided to catch a few cockroaches and make them wish me when Chirpika (name not changed) called me. I would not describe Chirpika for fear of sounding pornographic and all. I hope it would suffice when I say that I was more than excited to see her calling. But the excitement did not last long.

The first ten minutes were spent giggling. It was a tacit understanding for us to giggle if we did not understand what the other person had to say. So when I blabbered incessantly she reciprocated by giggling as much. The whole thing looked like a French man talking to a German in Marathi, a true treat to ears!

She then got into her natural form and spoke about wide variety of things ranging from her nail polish to how her mother has taken to some primitive form of pagan worship and started worshipping ants. From what I gathered she had been praying incessantly to ants and wishing for Chirpika’s marriage! She spoke about anything but my birthday!! For first time in life, I have started believing in God without any caveats, I mean it is a complete sign off.

With this I lost all hopes. I photographed myself in various angles and hoped for the best.

Two days later, my roommate took me to bakery and asked me to select a cake. I asked for who it was with a grudging voice. He named one of our roommates.  I never remembered when I stared any one with so much vengeance before.

It later turned out that I was choosing my own birthday cake. I am not sure how much I could make you enjoy this extremely long piece of nincompoopery, but the whole experience taught me one thing- You need not give any particular importance to the first day of a year. Each day is important, live it to the fullest.

My birthday cake

P.S: If I could celebrate by birthday 2 days later, why can’t I name my post as anything I like and disclaim any random thing?