My Birthday Party

“Ladies & gentlemen, girls & boys, may I have your attention please!” called out my son. While the murmuring died down, my eyes gazed around the hall. I was surrounded by close family members, relatives and friends. The men & boys in tuxedoes and the lovely ladies & girls draped in beautiful saris made no less than a style statement. And then there were those who I didn’t know, but they knew me, to be precise, they knew about me. They were not a few but many and they had chosen to come in large numbers. Many of them loved me, simply adored me. There were also a few who hated me, I could clearly see that in their eyes, and they were wondering how an ordinary man could transform into extraordinary, that too in such a short time. And all of them, without exception, were waiting impatiently for my son to continue.

It is indeed once in a lifetime opportunity if you are invited for a book reading by one of the largest bookstores in the country for your very first book, and the event holds a special importance in your life when they have chosen your birthday for this grand evening, not by purpose but by sheer coincidence. I will always remember the phone call from my publisher who asked me what plans I had for 29^th October, 2017. He being my close friend, associate and a business partner for almost a year and a half now, I had found this question coming from ‘him’ quite unusual. “Ashok, look who’s asking,” was my first response. I knew that Ashok had been coaxing me to celebrate my upcoming birthday in Mauritius, a place I had always longed for. In fact he had chalked out the entire itinerary and commenced the process of bookings too. No wonder his question intrigued me. My excitement went through the roof when he shared the invitation for book reading had come from none other than ‘Crossword’, my favourite bookstore.

Gradually when it dawned upon me the kind of space I will be into that evening, I started creating the evening as vividly as possible. I started applying the same tricks of trade which I had learnt in a life altering ‘curriculum for the living’ almost two years back and had mastered them step by step. It’s not that I had not known about them in the past, thanks to my habit of reading widely, however now the way they had been systematically ingrained in me by a set of specialists, through a beautifully designed process, it had made all the difference. If earlier they had appeared to me as monotonous as mugging science, in contrast, now I worshipped them as my God gifted craft. They had altered my life once and for all, they had brought out the ‘author’ in me, they had transformed me from being indecisive, lazy and self-centered to being result-oriented, fun-loving and shaping the destiny of humanity.   

I was glad to learn that my son had been thrilled with the possibility of raising a toast in my honour. More than my success, what he cherished was our altered relationship, a relationship in which I was present for him, I was listening to him with apt attention, and I was genuinely interested in what was happening in his life, in his space. This had brought two us much closer.  On this occasion, how could I miss to reflect upon the metamorphosis of a very different kind of relationship between me and my beautiful wife, a relationship which can exist only between two equals? I think I need not ask for more. My parents, brother, his family, mother-in-law & brother-in-law, close relatives and friends, all had gladly set aside everything else, to be with me, and celebrate this special evening.

Ladies & gentlemen, girls & boys, may I have your attention please!” called out my son again. “Today I raise a toast in the honour of my father, not because he is my father, but because what he has decided to be, a person who is living his life powerfully, living the life he loves.” I was stunned to hear these words coming out from him. “When had he imbibed these golden words?” I wondered. I soon realized I had been using them so often that my they had become my identity. Nothing could give me more pleasure than discovering how closer I had reached to what I had chosen to become and relentlessly worked towards achieving. It took a real effort for the event organizers to request people to stop applauding so that the evening could proceed further.

I briefly shared my journey of life, and begin the reading from the first credit which was for my parents, for my father from whom I had imbibed the art of writing and for my mother who had taken pains to make me learn spellings. The next one was for my life partner, who stood by me in my frustrating times, followed by the one for my son to have taken out long hours to proof-read my manuscript, and that’s how I continued the reading, covering all the credits and going to the extract of the plot and the best selling awards and I went on and on. Two hours hence, after I had stopped counting how many books I had autographed, it was time to leave for the ‘Taj Lands End’ for the cake cutting ceremony followed by cocktail and dinner.

While I climbed into our newly acquired GLE Class Mercedes, I smilingly reflected on the statement, “Money cannot buy everything, but if money is not a constraint, it helps.”