The Birthday Party

Monday, February 15, 2010



The friend who invited us for her daughter’s birthday party was the one about whom I had rightly guessed at the beauty salon that she was a ‘Punjabi’ and a ‘lecturer’. I had met her on one Saturday morning at the salon, and on the very next Saturday evening, she had done her part in taking our incidental meeting at the salon to the next level by happily agreeing to come with her two daughters to my kids’ birthday party.


We are new in Pune and have very few friends whom we’ve known previously. So, most of my guests at the aforesaid party were the people with whom I had interacted either at the Tennis court or at my kitchen window (my neighborhood friend stays in the apartment opposite mine and we can see each other through our kitchen windows!). It was very amusing to introduce my new-found friends as ‘my window buddy’, ‘my tennis buddy’, ‘my beauty salon buddy’…


The Birthday Parties at my house have always been great occasions for me to make friends with my kids’ friends’ mommies, neighboring families, my husband’s colleagues’ families etc. These parties tend to test my various faculties… for team-work, creative decoration, music sampling and deejaying, social networking, cooking involving minimum effort but maximum effect, organizing party games, sensible photography, and most importantly, keeping my nerves intact under total chaos.


However, all the hard work gets paid off when our guests’ faces radiate happiness and contentment at having spent an evening looking their best, dancing to the current chart-busters, playing party games, eating goodies to their heart’s content and carrying back with them colorful books as return gifts.