Of Birthdays

By

SKT Nasar

Do you really know the day, time, date, month, year and location of your birth? If you said yes, you are right. And, if your reply is a no, you are right. What nonsense is this? How can both yes and no answers to the same query be simultaneously right? Even the bigwigs of our society are not sure about their birthdays. Some have gone to courts to resolve their actual dates of birth. How come? Well, I will explain in my confused manner.

Like you, I too knew nothing about birthdays when I was born at Purnia in Bihar. I now realise at seventy years following that day that a birth is an extraordinary and divinely fascinating phenomenon. Its origin is not yet expounded by mainstream scientists. Only theories from cutting-edge laboratories flooded our science and our conscience once this phenomenon became known to be universally embedded in the multiverse system. Theologists say it is His desire for He designed the phenomenon of birth. I am still grappling with the question as a student of science. I also struggle to know why He, the Creator of all Creations, designed birth. I have to call on Him in person some day for the answer. Sinner that I am, I have to die to meet the Almighty. That brings me to another intriguing issue. Why should birth and death be friends forever, for everything?

Birth, despite the newborn’s first cry, is a happy occasion. I did not know if I was happy or sad at birth. Perhaps all earthly creatures from Mimivirus to Sequoia tree to the mammal Whale except us the human species do not display joy at births. Birth of a universe is not known to have made the clan of the multiverse to dance in delight. I wonder why my birth brought happiness to my large but nuclear family at that time.

I learnt later that my whole family was happy. Especially, my mother was delighted. I knew all facts related to my birth through acquired knowledge as given by those who were witness to that event. This acquired knowledge became belief that graduated to a fact as I grew up.  That is why I filled in thousands of forms with the concluding declaration that ‘the statements made above are true to my knowledge and belief’. Mark the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’. Thus, our birthdays are based on our knowledge, the acquire knowledge and on our belief, hammered into us through non-stop counselling.

I was the focus of welcome celebrations on arrival on this planet in to my mother’s lap.  Festivities were organised beginning with the azaan, the call to prayers in the name of Allah. That call, I was repeatedly told, was directed at me. I did not act in response then. And, I am still striving to respond to that azaan in vain to a degree. I was told that my first and a few subsequent birthday celebrations were masked in sorrow, fear and apprehension. The first child of my parents, my elder brother named Iqbal, had brought heavenly joy when he was born. Death overtook him at nine months of age devastating my mother along with the entire clan of Moulvi Tola at Purnia. I arrived in that milieu. As was the taboo then, I was sold out for one grain of rice to my eldest aunt, my mother’s first cousin and wife of my father’s eldest brother. The idea was to hoodwink the evil spirit who would again have targeted the second child born to my mother. The devil would not find me since I was already sold out. I have defied the evil spirit thus far. The devil must still be trying to locate me.

My parents’ later two sons were born at Hooghly in West Bengal and at Bhagalpur in Bihar. In accordance with the custom then, the carrying would-be mother would deliver her child among close relatives. Since my father had moved to Bhagalpur as a faculty at TNJ College later renamed as TNB College, my mother moved to Hooghly to deliver her third son. Times had changed later and her fourth and fifth sons were born at Bhagalpur where my family now had many friends and relatives by then. Taboos and superstitions were almost gone except that my mother had brought five of her sons to this world at homes, not in hospitals. That was my mother, strong enough to survive tribulations yet embracing happy moments! I would not be sitting here to write this piece if my mother had not given birth to me. I wonder as to why one should celebrate my birthdays rather than my birth seven decades ago. Why should one not rejoice my birth and pay tribute to the one who has been the worldly source of my birth. I mean my mother. International Mother’s Day in my reckoning indicates a separatedness of the mother from her children. I believe that birthdays deserve to be truly celebrated as the Mother’s Day.

Biologically speaking I am more a mother’s child than my father’s son. Each of my cells carries 23 chromosomes of my mother and 23 chromosomes of my father in the nucleus. It is the ‘Y’ chromosome from my father that made me a male baby. I carry the ‘X’ chromosome of my mother. Above all, each cell in my body is almost a replica of my mother’s cytoplasm with many essential genes contained in mitochondria. That is another reason for which I salute the mother; all mothers.

The funniest part is that the growing number of candles on my birthday cake reminds me that I am inching closer to the friend of my birth. The death! One is born to die. Why do we not celebrate death, then? I am glad that the tradition of some communities is to celebrate death, especially of old men and of women preferably old and married. I would wish that there be no strings attached to rejoicing the death of persons past their prime yet in good health. I am aware that my suggestion is easier said than done.

My birthday falls on 27 June. Celebrate, if you so wish, both as my birthday as well as my Mother’s Day and Parents’ Day. And, finally, when I am gone, do not mourn death; just keep celebrating life, my life, and our lives!