Birthday Horror

I envied my parents recently when someone inquired, four months before the actual event, how I planned to celebrate my 32nd birthday. They were born in rural India, where people were too busy trying to survive, engaged in brutal caste strife or drinking moonshine, to bother noting when babies were born, and have hence been spared the annual tyranny of having their age marked.

But then, if the stress of birthdays were truly annual, they would be bearable. You could, at a push, bring yourself to endure 24 hours of forced jollity, measuring your life (unflatteringly) against others and drinking until you wept. But increasingly, as one gets older, the dread of birthdays begins infecting large portions of the year: no sooner have you endured one than you are worrying about the next. Frankly, it’s time someone proffered an alternative…

Read atTimes Online