Au Revoir Teenage!!

Its May 3rd 2011, the 123rd day of the year and oh! Its my birthday too. Having turned 20 and forced to bid good bye to my Teenage, it seems that now I’m more responsible than ever and should start looking after me by myself instead of depending on my parents and others. And I guess I’m pretty much ready for it. Anyways, coming to my blog, this post describes all the events that had happened in the past 1 month regarding my birthday.

My Usual Birthday Scenario

Usually all my birthdays are pretty boring and we never get to celebrate it in the fancy manner that everyone does. The reason is that I was born in the mid summer where everyone (friends and relatives) will be on summer holidays, therefore they will be on tour or they will be in their relatives’ houses. This scenario dates back as far as I can remember till today. My mom used to say that we used to cut birthday cakes when I was a very small kid but I don’t remember any of those events. During 2002, I had a birthday party with all my neighboring friends but still missing my best friend (Shubham Shresth). After that I did not get a chance to cut a birthday cake till today and understanding the situation I’m never worried about it. And in school I never got to give chocolates to my classmates since we’ll be on vacation. Following the same theme for quite a long time, my birthday wasn’t looking special to me till this year giving a considerable amount of change.

The Change

Unlike previous years, the craze started for my birthday from January itself when my friends Arumugam and Kirthika planned to give a birthday present this year. I had told Arumugam that it would be awesome to get a notebook filled with wishes along with signatures of all my buddy classmates and challenged that it is highly impossible to get one. And on the other side, Kirthika had started working on a PowerPoint Presentation for my birthday stating that it will be totally unexpected and surprising to see it on my birthday. I was quite happy to know that I would be getting some kind of presents this month although they are not like the ones what others get on their birthdays. And soon months passed by and there was no sign of Arumugam getting signatures from the classmates so I took it out of my mind and was eager to see the Presentation of Kirthika. The Presentation went through quite a bit of struggle before reaching me like protecting it from others’ visibility by locking it Hide Folders software and burning it to a DVD (for which Arumugam helped Kirthika to burn it up after losing a DVD with burning errors).

Fortunately this year, my birthday was very close to the working days of my college and therefore I decided to give chocolate to my top 5 friends in college. But I was able to give only to Nalini and Lilly due to the tight examination schedule and all I had to leave to their native places as soon as the exam was over.

On April 29th (last day of the exam), the cover for the Secret Birthday Party organized by Arumugam and Kirthika was blown somehow through my intelligence and I was eagerly awaiting to cut the cake but I was pretending that I had no interest in celebrating my birthday by that evening. Surprisingly after the last exam was over, Lilly called me in to the canteen and gave a lovely birthday present in a purple wrapped box on behalf of her and Nalini. Unfortunately, Lilly got bus and went home since it was getting late for her. After everything was over, Kirthika presented a scrumptious looking Chocolate cake for celebrating my birthday. The Attendees were the so-called Pa-groups (Saranya Selvamani, Renuka Devi, Saranya Sivaraj, Jeyasudha, Silver Fancy Quel), Kunthavai Devi, Manimegalai and the unexpected Nalini showed up for a big surprise. The boys were my best friend in class Panneer Selvam, Abdul Jaleel, Sadham Hussain, Bagavath Singh, Deenuji, Arun Malar, Baskaran. And Obviously Arumugam and Kirthika. Since it was pretty windy, we couldn’t lite up the candles, so I pretended as I’ve blown up the candles and started cutting the cake with a birthday song sung by my classmates in the background. Since I was having no memorable experience in cutting cakes, it was slightly hard for me. But with a bit of effort I sliced the cake and gave the first piece of cake to Panneer. After that we cut the cake into many pieces and I gave them one by one to each of my classmates standing there. After we finished the entire cake, we departed to our homes saying bye to everyone of us.

Kirthika had given the Presentation DVD along with a chocolate in a custom-designed package that day and Arumugam had given a Blue wrapped present on May 1st. That was all for the gifts that I had received for my birthday and I had kept them near my i7 PC for opening them on the eve of my birthday.

May 3rd — My Birthday!

I was waiting anxiously for this day to come so that I could open the presents especially the unexpected Nalini-Lilly’s Birthday Gift. The clock didn’t strike 12 yet but everyone started showing their birthday wishes for me. First one to wish me was one of best friend Suhirtha Muhil’s Dad who was also the first one to wish me on Facebook by posting on my wall at May 2nd 10:37 PM :

Many more returns of the day- Mahes Uncle, Malar Aunty and Muhil

The first one to wish me through texting was Arumugam stating :

Wish you very happy birthday! Many more happy returns of the day Parithi!

After 12AM, the first one to call me was Kirthika (25 seconds) and wished me Happy Birthday and followed by a call from Panneer (41 seconds) and after that, its the Awesome Surprize!

Call from Shubham Shresth (My Best Friend in the Whole Wide World) — An Awesome Surprise!!!

Its been a looooong time (1 year) since me and Shubham had talked to each other over phone and I was shocked to see my Ike (Nokia 5800) ringing with the name ‘Shubham Shresth’ and my heart was beating like hell. I closed my eyes and tapped the ‘Answer’ button and started to talk. His voice was unbelievably changed and I managed calm myself down and started to talk with him. He wished me a very Happy Birthday and expressed his thoughts about my upcoming website (released now). Then he asked me to give the line to my bro and he too was too nervous in talking with him. After he had finished talking, he gave back the phone to me. Then Shubham wanted to test out my understanding and speaking ability in Hindi. I too accepted his challenge and told him to tell me a sentence in Hindi. He told something starting with (AAJ….) which i failed to understand and asked him the meaning of that. He translated that he was asking what was special for today. Having kept that in mind, I told that we’ll be going to a temple and for a dinner at a classy restaurant. After that, he promised that he will a take a look at my new website and told me to keep in touch through calls. The call lasted for 6 minutes and 32 seconds and after that we bid Good Bye. This could be the best surprise of my birthday this year :)

What I’ve missed during the call?

Since I was in a call, I was not able to see the incoming calls and messages. My Best SBOA Buddy Prince had called me but I failed to attend :( and therefore he had sent me a Voice SMS. Actually this is the first Voice SMS that I had received in my life. Following that, there were some unread birthday wishing texts from many. And I loved them all, and here are a very few of my favorites :

Prince :

Happy birthday buddy… You are 20… A big boy now…

Panneer :

Joyeux anniversaire mon ami :)

Nalini :

Wish u many more happy returns f d day jj:-):-):-):-).hav a fabulous yr:-).

I started replying them all and those who wished me on Facebook. In all the texting and call craze, I totally forgot about the gifts for my birthday. It was 1AM, but still I was not sleepy, I waked up everyone in my home and started opening up the presents.

What was in the Box?

Nalini & Lilly :

The beautifully purple wrapped gift box of Nalini and Lilly contained a fancy Flash Campanula or in other words, its WindChimes with LEDs around it. I was not expecting this at all and it was quite surprising. Now it took the place in my room as a centerpiece decor jingling from morning till now and its quite amazing how the current from the battery flows through such a thin string or cables.

Kirthika :

The white custom-designed package from Kirthika had a package containing the DVD, a message from her and a Cadbury Dairy Milk Crackle.

Arumugam :

The Blue wrapped gift box of Arumugam contained something really surprising. Remember the challenge that I made to him that I mentioned above? Unbelievably his gift box contained a notebook which had birthday wishes and signature of 95% of my classmates in each and every page. I was really astounded to see how he and others (Sadham, Kirthika and Lilly) had managed to get the message from each and every classmate without any trace. Fairly, he had won the challenge eventhough I failed to find out when everyone were wishing Advance Happy Birthday unusually. The package also contained a small Teddy Bear keychain.

After finished seeing all the gifts, I went to sleep.

In the morning,

I got up very early in the morning and made some minor refinements to the site and started getting ready to move to temple. We went to the famous Maruthamalai Temple situtated here in Coimbatore and prayed to the Holy Lord Murugan. Me and My Bro took our camera out and took some snapshots from the mountain covering the city of Coimbatore. Here’s one of them :

After returned back home, there was a surprising text message from RMKV wishing me for my birthday in my mom’s mobile. Here’s how it looks :

Spent rest of the day sleeping under the AC and then went out to a very classy restaurant for dinner with my dad’s friend. Thats the end of my birthday :)

Here are all those who have wished me :

Through Call :

Shubham Shresth*
Panneer Selvam*
Kirthika*
Prince* (Tried to)
Robin Gautham
Ganesh Ponraju

Through Texts:

Shubham Shresth*
Panneer Selvam*
Prince*
Nalini*
Lilly
Kirthika*
Arumugam*
Arul Edwin Fredrick
Deepak
Sri
Deenuji
Saba Kumar
Abdul Jaleel*
Bagavath*
Suganya

* — Wished me at Midnight

On Facebook :

Through Messages:

Sampath Kumar Sir
Deepit Jindal
Jeyaraj Yuv

Through Wall :

Chockalingam Csp
Vishwas Patel
Saba Kumar P
Maya Dk
Shubhangi Shresth
Dinesh Raja Ruban
Sharad Kaplingad
Shiny Grisselda
Abhinav Anand
Luca Ubertini
Raghul Surya R
Sneha Motwani
Vishnu Pankajakshan
Mahesh Waran
Mayil Vaganan
Venkatesh Elangvan
Robin Muthukumar
Manoj S Kumar
Gabriel Raz
Dharini Cool
Prem Sundar
Bharathi Shanmugam
Vignesh Subburaj
Krishna Kumar
Sunil Chandrasekar
and many more…

Belated Wishes:

My Aunty
Muthusankar