Moment: August 16th, 2019 at 11:35 AM
Cousin: ”You’re not a teenager anymore!”
His younger sister: ”Wait, when were you ever a teenager?”
This post is a little overdue, but I’m 20 years old! This was the first year I’ve ever spent my birthday away from my parents and my brother, but I’m so blessed to have amazing family and friends here with me in India who made it a truly special occasion. Turns out when you have loved ones on the opposite sides of the world, your birthday actually lasts two days :)
When I went to lunch with the girls from my program for our Eid holiday, Ishmeet, our resident director and birthday enthusiast, brought a gorgeous Black Forest cherry cake and had our server bring it out after our meal. Our server took his role of videographer very seriously and basically made a short film documenting everything from lighting the candles (which Mom sent me from the US) to my extremely awkward facial expressions as my friends sang "Happy Birthday" to me, so when I cut the cake and fed everyone as per Indian tradition, he got a slice of cake too.
Growing up, my birthday was always the first day of school, which is quite possibly the worst way to spend a birthday. But this year, my birthday fell on a long weekend, because it is right after Indian Independence Day. We spent the day playing an unofficial game of hide-and-seek at IKEA (a.k.a getting lost) and watching the latest Tarantino film. It turns out it was IKEA’s first birthday in Hyderabad too, so we were super festive with our birthday hats.
For dinner, we went to an authentic Telugu restaurant called Subaiyya Gari, and that dining experience was on a whole other level. It’s an all-you-can-eat style restaurant where the servers come and serve you food on traditional banana leaves. Our server, Manoj Anna (Anna means brother in Telugu) gave us the full experience of a home-style Telugu meal...which means he kept putting food on our plate even after we insisted that we were absolutely stuffed. At one point, I made him promise THREE times that he wouldn’t come back and put any more food on my plate, so he agreed, then came back not even 15 seconds later and said, “Madam, just a little more rice and rasam?” The six of us left with some serious food babies, and still were able to somehow cram into a single auto rickshaw to head back to campus.
The next day, for my actual birthday, I went to my aunt’s house to celebrate with my mom’s brother’s family. My cousins, Jason and Joanne, decorated with banners and balloons, and surprised me with a gorgeous arrangement of roses, a stuffed bear, and a box of chocolates, which one of my best friends, Hannah, sent me from the States! One of my great aunts and my aunt's family was also able to join us, so I cut a cake (and wound up wearing some of it), shot a confetti cannon (I also wound up wearing some of that), and we had a really fun time together.
Then I headed over to my other cousin Divya’s house, and I cut another cake with her, my aunt, and my uncle (and once again, my face ended up covered in icing). They ordered some world-famous Hyderabadi biryani for dinner, and Divya Akka took me to a local craft fair, where I spent WAY too much money on beautiful jewelry, kurtis, and a handwoven peacock-feather-printed jute backpack. It was a lot of fun to meet the artisans and see all of the wares they had made.
That night, I went to a dinner with my bible study group, and my family friends, Jose Uncle and Karen Aunty, picked me up. When I got into the car, their 7-year-old twin girls exclaimed in unison, “Happy belated birthday Shiny Akka!” Their mom told me that they had been rehearsing, and that they picked out my cake, which was very sweet of them. It was such a wonderful time of fun, food, and fellowship with these girls, and this entire birthday weekend, I felt so loved even though I was far away from home.
The folks back home also made my birthday one to remember, so thank you to everyone who called, texted, FaceTimed, Snapchatted, Instagram DM-ed, and maybe even carrier pigeoned (the birds haven’t reached me yet though). Birthdays are a commemoration of the year that has passed, and a celebration of the year to come, but those years would mean nothing without people to share them with.
P.S. There's a really fun Indian birthday song called "Baar baar din yeh aaye" that is dedicated to a girl named Sunitha, and the choreography alone is enough to consider maybe putting the typical happy birthday song to rest (The happy birthday part starts at 1:14).
