Birthday parties

As I sit in the bus going for one more birthday party I can’t help thinking about my elder son’s first birthday bash that we organised in the Yacht Club, Mumbai. It was the single most important event to occupy my mind months before the actual party. How do we celebrate it– on a big scale or a small house party, who would be on the invite list, the venue and most important ….would my son enjoy?
My son was the first grandson in the family from both sides. He was the star, the much cherished baby of the house and everyone wanted to play with him. Both the grand mums celebrated his birthday month after month, every month till he reached 1 year so obviously that they wanted to celebrate his 1st birthday in a big way. I was in for a big party too but my reason was very different. As I was growing up I remember sitting for hours together near the photo album cabinet in our living room and go through the loads of old photographs stored so well by my mother. Out of all the old fashioned albums, my favourite one was that of my 1st birthday. It was a very thick album with a shiny bluish-silver cover and had dozens of black and white photographs stuck on black chart paper and each black paper was divided by butter paper. I would be ever so careful in lifting each page and would observe each photo in great detail. Although I remembered nothing of the actual day, I would just feel nice that my birthday was important enough to be celebrated in a big way and that so many people had come to sing “Happy Birthday” for me! Of course my son might think differently when he grew up but that’s what I wanted to believe so we went ahead.

Weeks before the party I went and got my hair cut and coloured, hunted for the perfect dress to wear and took extra care in deciding what my son would wear. I was actually very lucky as all the party organising work, hall booking, deciding the menu, etc was taken care of by a very dear friend of mine who was also a member of the Yacht Club. So I was left with more time doing the fun stuff like deciding on the cake, party decorations and the music selection…all geared towards making it fun for my baby.

The birthday party was a huge success thanks to balloons, the music and the wafers for my son and the fact that he went off to sleep early and left the rest of the evening for me to sing, dance and just let my hair down!
I have attached two of my most favourite photographs from the birthday album. Hope my friends don’t mind me using their photos on my blog.

I have kept up with the tradition of giving birthday parties every year (almost) after that and it is still the biggest event of the year for me.