Birthdays

Today was Saryu's birthday. As she hates the food served in the canteen, we made her a little gift basket of her favorite food-like substances, including Maggi noodles, Cerelac baby food, Hide & Seek biscuits and masala-flavored Lays potato chips. Deepika insisted that we present the...um...present at midnight. Thinking that Deepika was really gung-ho about birthdays, I agreed.

But it turns out that everyone in Saryu's circle of friends (and possibly in all of Delhi) are mad about birthdays. Once the clock struck midnight, Saryu was bombarded with phone calls from friends and family. At 12:10 Saryu commented that her parents were terrible for not calling her. I thought she was joking as I don't know of anyone whose parents would call them at midnight on their birthday. But then at 12:12 her parents did call.

Birthdays are serious business here.

The celebration continued during the daylight hours as well. Saryu's sister surprised her by having a cake and flowers delivered to our office. After taking some pictures of the goodies, we ate the cake in the traditional Indian fashion. Saryu dipped her knife into the cake, separating out the first slice. Scooping the slice up with her fingers, she fed one bite to Deepika, then to Lisa, then to me. In turn, Deepika cut out a second slice of cake and fed it to Saryu. She then passed along that slice to Lisa who offered Saryu a second bite. And I, after receiving the hand off from Lisa, fed Saryu the final bite.