Turning Sixty

Till recently, I was quietly proud of my own track record of never having submitted to the ordeal of cutting a birthday cake, not once.  When we were young, that custom was not prevalent in our circles - most probably because egg was taboo at home and eggless cake was not even work in progress.  The celebration, if one can give it that nomenclature, started with the classic pink coloured cotton candy and abruptly ended after a merry-go-round ride, if one could be found.  Mind you, not in a party with the other kids, but just by yourself, accompanied by some frowning elder, who was mortified having to do what he was doing .  Elders could not be blamed because they never partied either.  By the time I was 10 or so, even that small bit of fun ceased because my little brother caught diphtheria after indiscriminately stuffing his young face with cotton candies, especially made for him with a heavier dose of bacteria than what his body was accustomed to.

Since that time, whenever there was an attempt to drag me, even kicking and screaming, to cut a cake, I had always dexterously found some exit route.  For someone who had grown older with such serious aversion to cake-cutting, my pride was dented recently, not once but twice in quick succession, within a ten day period.   My mistake was just that I turned 60 and none around me was willing to concede it was a natural process beyond my control; that it was not some monumental achievement I had worked for, with enormous skills not commonly identified in humans.  My protestations that even animals dumber than me age every year did not cut much ice and I was forced to go through two parties.  Don't get me wrong, the parties were enormous fun alright and the friends who put them together were so loving and thoughtful; but the cake cutting was not a joy! 

The first party was a surprise, absolutely so.  Usually with surprise parties, the only individual who lacks the critical knowledge that the person who is not supposed to know (let us call him/her the birthdayer, for want of a better term) about the party is actually in possession of this priceless information, is the party organizer.   This happens because an obtuse invitee chooses to call on the landline phone and without any preamble asks `So, what time are we supposed to meet for the surprise party'?, not realizing that the person at the other end is the birthdayer.  Or, a dimwit among the invitees meets the birthdayer a couple of days earlier and blurts out something about looking forward to the fun party and moves on without even realizing that he has given the game away.  In my case, this one was a genuine surprise because I had no clue, despite the fact that closer to the date, as a practice, I consciously deploy additional, ultra-sensitive antennae to catch all signals in the ether around me because I am always suspicious of a conspiracy to bring me and my cake face to face.  My dear wife had quietly outsourced the entire process of organization to some friends, with her own singular contribution regarding all the goodies I am fond of.   On the appointed day, I was feeling a bit under the weather and was taking things very easy.  My wife, unusually I must say, wondered why I had not even shaved and that should have sharpened my instincts.  But lethargy induced by the feeling that one was unwell had clouded my antennae completely.  A couple of friends called and tried to pull me out of the house, so that they could create party ambience without my knowledge.  I inadvertently threw a spanner into their machinery by declining because I did not feel like stirring out, without realizing I was inconveniencing a big crowd of 50 people already assembled somewhere else.  And actually went to sleep!! The next thing I knew, this group of people carrying all kinds of eats and drinks, marching into the house an hour later, as I was trying to nap.  There was a shower of confetti by some 10 kids and I was shocked out of my wits, still not any wiser about what was going on.  I was forced to shave, shower and then, horror of horrors, cut a cake, with a knife pointed at my ribs!!  It almost looked like it was either the cake or me, and I wisely opted for the cake to be cut.

The other party was not a surprise in that I knew about the arrangement.  The friend who graciously hosted this one knew me well enough and was afraid that I might just decamp on the day, if I was not told upfront - wise man! But I did not expect such a congregation of friends of a few decades from various cities; but the niggling thought that there was a cake hidden somewhere and would make its menacing appearance soon, was smothering all the joy bubbling up at the sight of old friends.  The fact that I share my birth date with a very dear friend, who was also present,  was a  great consolation because I was not going to face the ordeal alone.  This friend is a shameless, avid cake-cutter (he looks for knives to cut cakes on display in bakeries and his wife has to physically restrain him!) and I knew he would take over without a pause, if I were to prove unequal to the demanding task.  When those tiny wedges were cut off the whole cakes, my friend was beaming from ear to ear, while I felt mortified for a second time in ten days at the sickening thought of my track record having been besmirched irredeemably.

It was so funny, seeing other grey-haired men breezily calling me`old man', just because they had a few more strands of black hair (actually it did not matter, some had no hair at all!) and were two weeks behind me in reaching the milestone of sixty.  Even that is dubious because some of them are very capable of a shenanigan a la the Army Chief - have two different birth dates, one for seniority in the office as well as special situations which demanded `elderly' bulldozing; and another for going around calling others `old men'.

While I was not the least bit uncomfortable about being sixty (I was more worried about the cake-cutting!), some cheer came my way in the next few days.  First, I went to the Indian Railway's website to reserve tickets for travel in May.  Even with three months to go, the chart, as usual, mocked at me screaming `berths not available'; but wait-listing was possible.  So, I went ahead and sought to wait-list myself.  When I hesitantly ticked the box to declare for the first time that I was a senior citizen and hit `go', I had a pleasant surprise.  It looks like there is a separate quota for senior citizens (this is not disclosed upfront for some reason), from which I got a lower berth allotted pronto, that too at a concessional rate!!  Considering that there is not much difference between say fifty eight and sixty,  I wished I was the latter two years earlier, to reap these fringe benefits!  How many times had I been rebuffed earlier by the same reservation system with that foul, stern message that `even wait listing was not possible'?  And then came the biggest surprise - when I half heartedly asked the cashier at my golf club whether there was a concessional rate for `senior citizens', he glumly disclosed `Yes sir; it is less than 30% of the normal rate'.  He knew it was a big cut that my game did not deserve, but could not do anything about it!  That was the icing on the cake, you will agree.  I only hope I don't have to cut any more cakes, ever!  Unless of course, they would let me into golf clubs and trains completely free, gratis!!