Birthdays

In my team, we used to celebrate birthdays by asking the birthday girl/boy's friends to write down their thoughts about the person whose birthday we were celebrating, and then that person would be asked to guess who wrote what. That used to be a lot of fun. Too bad we discontinued it.

I was just sorting through some old sent items in my mailbox, and I came across some of those comments that I wrote for my friends. Now I've reproduced them exactly as they were, without correcting spelling, grammar or punctuation, or highlighting the errors in pink. I just reformatted it a little to make it look a little neater.

December 18, 2007. This was written for Chaya. Her birthday falls on the 20th of December.

• What makes him/ her different from others: her cheerful, bubbly nature, her giggling, her PJs, and her adoration for penguins!
• Well, if you become him/her manager what would u like to change in him/her: nothing that I can think of right now…
• What irritates him/her the most: Akash!! Especially when he does things like stealing her stuffed toys!
• "BINDAAS BOL" write what you want to say about him/her in this section: Chaya is very much like herself ;-)

I distinctly remember not being alone in answering the third question above this way. The team unanimously declared Akash to be extremely talented at irritating Chaya.

January 10, 2008. This was for Akash. His birthday falls on the 10th of January.

• What makes him/ her different from others: the way he keeps track of every penny in his wallet and constantly cribs about the shortage of the same!!
• Well, if you become him/ her manager what would u like to change in him/ her: nothing
• What irritates him/ her the most: it has already been established that Akash is very good at irritating others… so there’s not much opportunity for others to irritate him
• "BINDAAS BOL" write what you want to say about him/ her in this section: apne type ka ek hi piece hai. I will always remember the way he tried to unlock my laptop using his toe prints on my fingerprint reader! :D

November 14, 2007. This was for Ashish. His birthday falls on the 15th of November.

• What makes him different from others: the way he refuses to grow up!!
• Well, if you become his manager what would u like to change in him: nothing much… but I would give him a little less work to do
• What irritates him the most: I don’t know what irritates him but the way he screams “Mummy!” when he gets irritated is absolutely adorable ;-)
• "BINDAAS BOL" write what you want to say about him in this section: he looks like such a cute [sorry Ashish, I know you don’t like this word but I couldn't help using it ;-) ] little pixie when he runs about all over the place looking for Abhijeet or Bhatti or Aman

What I distinctly remember about this day is that, when all this stuff was read out, everyone, Bhatti, Abhinav, and some other people, could distinctly identify that I wrote it, just from the writing style. And this came at a time when I hadn't even started blogging. But the birthday boy could not identify who these words came from. I don't remember who he thought wrote these, but I do remember that he thought I wrote the comments that Abhinav actually wrote.

September 27, 2007. This was written for my boss, Mohit. His birthday is on the 29th of September.

• What defines him: His impatience to get things done. And they way he constantly keeps asking us “Chal gaya sab kuch?” :D
• Something which you would like to be different in him: I guess I would like him a lot better if he was not my manager :-P
• What he can’t stand: Things not being done systematically
• Hobbies & Interest: Sports, big cars, spending time with and talking about his daughters
• What his friends have to say about him: he’s basically a nice a guy, and a good manager too, in spite of everything I said :-P
• His most embarrassing moment if know to you: don’t know. If I knew and I told everyone, then I’d probably be risking my job ;-)

I was looking for the comments I wrote for Abhinav on his birthday. I wonder where those went. Maybe I deleted them for fear of the "Neat Rat" snooping around in my mailbox. I do distinctly remember that the first time I wrote birthday comments for someone, they were for Abhinav.

We actually had this little tradition going for a really short span of time. Too bad I never had a birthday in that duration!