{"id":2383,"date":"2016-04-18T10:40:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T05:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/birthday-stress-bday-cry\/"},"modified":"2016-04-18T10:40:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T05:10:15","slug":"birthday-stress-bday-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2383","title":{"rendered":"Birthday Stress: It\u2019s Your B\u2019day So You Know You Want To Cry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“E<\/span><\/p>xcited for the birthday?\u201d she asks, with a smirk and a thorough disregard for what a massive buzzkill she\u2019s being. \u201cYeah, no, I don\u2019t know,\u201d I fumble. While that might sound like I exhausted all my possible responses in one go, it\u2019s the most accurate way I can describe my mid-20s. I\u2019ve wrestled with the thought of being 26 various times over the past week and have come to realise that at some point, birthdays stop becoming a milestone and morph into a ticking hourglass of how long you have before that perfect job, perfect marriage or even… perfect life.<\/span>\n\nI grew up in an upper-middle-class household. So as a kid, birthday parties usually meant samosas, wafers, and a piece of Monginis Black Forest strewn across palm-sized paper plates. This was usually followed by the birthday boy\u2019s dad bursting a balloon which lead to copious amounts of Maha Lacto and confetti falling from the ceiling fan. Cue: aggressive seven-year-olds volleying to catch candy like their life depended on it, oblivious to the fact that we\u2019d get the same Maha Lacto if we just bothered walking to the punch bowl on the dining table. <\/span>\n\nAt that age, we were unafraid of looking stupid or turning a year older. And our biggest birthday party concern was \u201cbirthday bumps\u201d aka the infant version of mob-violence. A savage act where fourteen of us hoist up the birthday boy and proceed to kick his buttocks with an aggression that rivalled Ronaldo\u2019s against Juventus. <\/span>\n\nIn contrast, at 26, \u201cbirthday ka kya plan?\u201d hardly invokes the same thrill it once did. My feeble attempts at feigning excitement are no match for the enthusiasm of those friends who proudly proclaim the arrival of their \u201cbirthday month\u201d on social media. It\u2019s vain enough that humankind is the only species that decides to celebrate the anniversary of their landing on the planet, but to begin celebrating a \u201cbirthday month\u201d is well\u2026 pushing it. You\u2019re a human being, not the cure to cancer. You cannot have an entire month dedicated to your creation. Post-25, birthdays shouldn\u2019t even be considered a celebration: They are merely annual reminders of unfulfilled potential, ever-ticking biological clocks, and how everyone your age is doing so much better than you. <\/span>\n

The agony of the last few birthday parties I\u2019ve attended makes even the most savage birthday bumps seem painless by comparison.<\/blockquote>\nThe agony of the last few birthday parties I\u2019ve attended makes even the most savage birthday bumps seem painless by comparison. Most mid-20s birthday parties follow a similar trajectory: The creation of a WhatsApp Group called \u201cXYZ\u2019s Twenty Sexth ;)\u201d, followed by 5,136 messages over the course of three weeks, only to end up in a night of lazy pre-drinking, half-assed bar-hopping, and back to some sorry sod\u2019s place for an after-party \u2013 where the party truly begins. In this dimly lit 1BHK in a part of Chembur that nobody is sober enough to find on Google Maps, a number of XYZ\u2019s college buddies interspersed with some of XYZ\u2019s work colleagues will proceed to get blackout drunk. <\/span>\n\nSince this is a gathering of people in their mid-20s, the slurry conversations that follow focus on how over the years, Maha Lacto has made way for lactose intolerance, how one of us lost his childhood best friend to better career prospects abroad, how XYZ\u2019s ex recently got married, followed by the girl in the LBD tearfully confessing that she peaked at 19. Some will recall all the things they wanted to accomplish by this age, and how they assumed they\u2019d at least be married, if not have a steady relationship by now. And how a lot of their peers have moved on with their lives, wives, and some are even parents. “People my age are having children. WTF I am still a children”, XYZ mumbles before passing out. <\/span>\n\nThey find solace in talking to people whose names they won\u2019t remember tomorrow. At 5AM, somewhere between fighting for the AUX cable and the cops responding to a noise complaint, this most exuberant acknowledgement of XYZ surviving another year of their pointless existence comes to a merciful end. <\/span>\n\nI don\u2019t quite know if I\u2019m looking forward to my birthday. All I know for sure is that in a couple of days I\u2019ll be among the few whom I call friends, staring at my name written in whipped cream across a bittersweet Dutch truffle. And the almost-burnt-out candles will act as a metaphor for my mediocre mid-20s. <\/span>\n\nBut maybe I should count my blessings. At least I haven\u2019t turned 30 yet. I\u2019ve heard at those old-fogey parties, people go off to sleep without any drink in their systems, while waiting for the birthday cake \u2013 and the boy\/girl \u2013 to arrive. Before midnight. I suppose I will cross that bridge when I come to it, hopefully in possession of the perfect job, perfect marriage, and even… perfect life.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birthdays cease to be celebrations, once the needle goes beyond 25. Instead, they turn into annual reminders of unfulfilled potential, ever-ticking biological clocks, and how everyone your age is doing so much better than you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":2384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[4812,4813,3260,2431,1240,4814,1245,2918,4662,4668],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-20s","tag-30s","tag-age","tag-birthday","tag-cake","tag-growing-up","tag-millennials","tag-nostalgia","tag-old","tag-young"],"yoast_head":"\nBirthday Stress: It\u2019s Your B\u2019day So You Know You Want To Cry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Birthdays cease to be celebrations, once the needle goes beyond 25. 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