Fifty fifty

5..4..3..2..1..!

And….

I turned 50!

Now how many people can make that claim, Mi?

Actually when I saw the prompt yesterday, I thought, ha! I’ll skip it this week. Then this morning, as I savored my second coffee, I thought, omigosh, I have the perfect thing to say! And what a momentous occasion!

50 is such a big number. Okay, so maybe I don’t act a day over 24 (I didn’t say it  – everyone does!) but who can escape the chronological fact. I am laughing my head off at all the junk I spew – age ain’t nothing but a number after all. Ask Aaliyah

Mi, remember when you turned 50? YOU didn’t look a day over 35. Gorgeous thick black hair, svelte, beautifully dressed and a billion dollar smile. I fondly recall how T and I stressed and stressed over that diamond nose stud and ring we got you. We were so scared you would blink and miss the stone. That’s all I could afford, but I wanted to make sure I got you something valuable. To you, though, my hug meant more than anything else.  What is funny is you hardly ever wore those things.

Your birthday was always exciting as it came so close to the Tamil New Year, usually the day after and it would seem like a continuous celebration. You aged so gracefully, if one could consider that you aged. Same sense of humor. Ready laughter. I feel so good to think of your uninhibited laughter.

Incidentally, this year’s English calendar date coincided with the Tamil calendar date – it was Purattasi 11 on September 27, same as it was the year I was born. Nice no? I was thinking, as I looked at our tear off date calendar, how excited you would have been and made such a big deal out of it.  And I couldn’t help feeling sad to think that you would have only been 68. So unfair that you should have gone so soon when others, who have taken a lifelong oath to be really mean, should carry on past 80 years. Oh well. It must be true what they say about God wanting the good people back too soon. Which makes me…what? Never mind.

I had a lovely day. In between constant phone calls, I managed to get lunch done. Tinda and onion curry, sliced brinjal fry, phulka rotis, curd and ahem! chocolate cake. All my friends, the people closest to my heart called. Some unexpected but delightful. It was so lovely. Later in the afternoon we took a walk to the Mall to check out laptops. We returned home with a bean chair. Silly me. I had a sudden hankering for one and was readily obliged. I have to clear up a space to accommodate it now.

Had plans of some clearing up today, but life interrupted. Plumbing problems. Flush tank handle broke. So became emergency. The overflow made the wall behind it damp and this seeped through – and we can see it from the other side. While this will be fixed, the pee-gens are camping there, scraping the heck out of the wall, while I am resigning myself to scraping their shit. Our neighbor fixed a net around their verandah and I was admiring it. Then yesterday, while hanging out clothes to dry, I noticed one stupid pee-gen had managed to get in and was flapping around. Ayyo, I thought. These birds are such idiots. And one, happily parked itself on the sill and refused to respond to my shoo-shoo. Coolly looked at me as though it couldn’t care less. It probably didn’t.

Incidentally, please note that family did not bother. Nobody called. Surprised? Not really, right?

And life will go on, rather pleasantly most of the time, nevertheless, right? Yup!

Sharing is caring!