My 26th!
It was never going to be the same without my mum but my birthday turned out to be an unforgettable one. It started with a dinner on the eve with my best friends at a vegetarian restaurant just off Regent Street. Like the Commensal chain of restos in Montreal, it's a buffet where you pay by weight of the food on your plate. They had good organic lagers too. Then unlike last year we didn't celebrate midnight in a disgracefully drunk manner. Everybody seemed knackered so we just had a quiet pint and headed home. One of my best friends and I stayed up drinking lagers and chatting till 5, at which point I braved London's pathetic early Sunday morning public transport system to meet my sis at Heathrow. She had purposely booked her return to Boston for my birthday and I knew she came bearing gifts. But oh my, I didn't expect a suitcase full of goodies! The hand-luggage trolley weighed more than a check-in suitcase.
Anyways, it was lovely to spend a couple hours with her and at 10 we parted ways. Instead of returning home I made the long return journey to Enfield for a quiet birthday lunch at my guardian family's house. As usual they had prepared a sumptuous Indian meal that included a potato kurma (on request), a chick pea curry, some dal curry, an egg curry and carrot raita. Then their niece brought out a carrot cake which was super delicious! Their son gifted me a casual wear Liverpool polo shirt from the Adidas shop! And then we watched Stoke pulverise Arsenal into submission and outta the FA Cup! It was a magical birthday but I was well 'n' truly shattered.
26th Birthday gifts.
So I returned home and opened up a birthday gift from my best friends the previous night. A Hard Day's Night. My first Beatles LP. Get in son! Then began the flurry of phonecalls from all over the world. First my uncle called, who then passed on the phone to my maternal grandparents and his wife. Then while he got the phone back we got into a deep discussion of India's Constitution by which time he was being pressured by my cousins in Madras to get off the phone. But to my surprise I didn't just get a call from Madras. My cousins in Madras organised a conference call on Skype with my cousin who works for Microsoft in Seattle and my cousins in California, tested it out beforehand and then stunned me by singing happy birthday altogether. It wasn't their finest singing hour but my heart melted. Each city's participants took it in turn to talk to me and on it went for the rest of the night. Then my dad called and we chatted for over an hour. Meanwhile my sis had arrived in Boston and I was barely keeping awake, but the night was not over yet. And I was hungry.
I logged online and was welcomed by dozens of Facebook birthday wishes. Nothing quite like a post to your Wall to boost the ol' ego! Then came the most emotional part of the day. Remember how I'd taken a vow to go vegetarian for a year back in September? Well I had done that to aid in my mum's recovery but even after she passed away I decided to stick with it; except for the three meat meals she had cooked and left for me in my freezer. Every year that my mum visited me, both here and while I was studying in Montreal, she would cook all my favourite meals and store them in aluminium containers in my freezer. Then over the course of the year, almost until my mum's next trip, I would work my way through the two-plus dozens of out-of-the-world dishes. So when I had originally taken up the vow, I had planned on donating the meat meals to my friends. But after my mum passed away, I decided to eat just those three meat dishes during the year of the vow, and only on special occasions. And it doesn't get much bigger than my birthday. Keeping a pic of my mum beside me, I ate her chicken curry with white rice and plain yoghurt. It was emotional but perfect. And needless to say, tasty!
Eating my first meat meal since September, with my mum by my side.
It didn't feel weird eating meat for the first time in nearly five months. It's probably because of those meat-substitute products which are really good substitutes, even if not the real thing. Anyways, after the meal I went through the trolley full of gifts my sis brought with her. In it was a card made by my cousin who's always been my biggest fan. She recycled the paper for the card herself and then got every Tharun, Dixit and Hari in India to sign it. So nice of her. Then there were more food goodies from Muscat and India, incl my favourite home-made tiny poppadoms. By 10pm I was barely keeping awake and eventually passed out. A 26th Birthday to remember!
[Addendum, 5 Jan 2021: Mum passed away on 3 December 2009. I ate the last of her 3 frozen curries (her speciality, South Indian chicken - which as a born again vegetarian of some 15 years was impressive) on 24 January 2011, exactly a year later and just over a year after mum passed. It is nigh on impossible to explain what that feeling was like. I will never experience as emotional a meal as that ever again... <3]
Anyways, it was lovely to spend a couple hours with her and at 10 we parted ways. Instead of returning home I made the long return journey to Enfield for a quiet birthday lunch at my guardian family's house. As usual they had prepared a sumptuous Indian meal that included a potato kurma (on request), a chick pea curry, some dal curry, an egg curry and carrot raita. Then their niece brought out a carrot cake which was super delicious! Their son gifted me a casual wear Liverpool polo shirt from the Adidas shop! And then we watched Stoke pulverise Arsenal into submission and outta the FA Cup! It was a magical birthday but I was well 'n' truly shattered.
26th Birthday gifts.
So I returned home and opened up a birthday gift from my best friends the previous night. A Hard Day's Night. My first Beatles LP. Get in son! Then began the flurry of phonecalls from all over the world. First my uncle called, who then passed on the phone to my maternal grandparents and his wife. Then while he got the phone back we got into a deep discussion of India's Constitution by which time he was being pressured by my cousins in Madras to get off the phone. But to my surprise I didn't just get a call from Madras. My cousins in Madras organised a conference call on Skype with my cousin who works for Microsoft in Seattle and my cousins in California, tested it out beforehand and then stunned me by singing happy birthday altogether. It wasn't their finest singing hour but my heart melted. Each city's participants took it in turn to talk to me and on it went for the rest of the night. Then my dad called and we chatted for over an hour. Meanwhile my sis had arrived in Boston and I was barely keeping awake, but the night was not over yet. And I was hungry.
I logged online and was welcomed by dozens of Facebook birthday wishes. Nothing quite like a post to your Wall to boost the ol' ego! Then came the most emotional part of the day. Remember how I'd taken a vow to go vegetarian for a year back in September? Well I had done that to aid in my mum's recovery but even after she passed away I decided to stick with it; except for the three meat meals she had cooked and left for me in my freezer. Every year that my mum visited me, both here and while I was studying in Montreal, she would cook all my favourite meals and store them in aluminium containers in my freezer. Then over the course of the year, almost until my mum's next trip, I would work my way through the two-plus dozens of out-of-the-world dishes. So when I had originally taken up the vow, I had planned on donating the meat meals to my friends. But after my mum passed away, I decided to eat just those three meat dishes during the year of the vow, and only on special occasions. And it doesn't get much bigger than my birthday. Keeping a pic of my mum beside me, I ate her chicken curry with white rice and plain yoghurt. It was emotional but perfect. And needless to say, tasty!
Eating my first meat meal since September, with my mum by my side.
It didn't feel weird eating meat for the first time in nearly five months. It's probably because of those meat-substitute products which are really good substitutes, even if not the real thing. Anyways, after the meal I went through the trolley full of gifts my sis brought with her. In it was a card made by my cousin who's always been my biggest fan. She recycled the paper for the card herself and then got every Tharun, Dixit and Hari in India to sign it. So nice of her. Then there were more food goodies from Muscat and India, incl my favourite home-made tiny poppadoms. By 10pm I was barely keeping awake and eventually passed out. A 26th Birthday to remember!
[Addendum, 5 Jan 2021: Mum passed away on 3 December 2009. I ate the last of her 3 frozen curries (her speciality, South Indian chicken - which as a born again vegetarian of some 15 years was impressive) on 24 January 2011, exactly a year later and just over a year after mum passed. It is nigh on impossible to explain what that feeling was like. I will never experience as emotional a meal as that ever again... <3]