The Birthday Post

So I have survived, successfully I hope, all alone in a strange country, paying my own bills, cooking my own food, doing my own laundry and my own grocery shopping and even waking up by myself to get ready for class (with a little help from my faithful alarm clocks on the east coast and one back in Chennai). And now i add turning 22 to the list. God, i feel so adult (read: old) already.

As all of you who follow me on Google Buzz would already know, I was super excited about my bday. Since most of my friends were free and pumped up about the holiday season, we’d planned a party (yeah finally I can tune the radio in my head that’s been playing ‘I will survive’ in a loop for the last 10 weeks to ‘party in the USA’). I went shopping on my bday eve for winter clothes in preparation for my trip to Chicago. It was my first shopping trip since I came to LA and aaah what bliss to finally feel like a girl again! I bought a cool pea coat and a wool cap and open tipped gloves (for ppl with long nails apparently but since I’d bitten off all my beautiful nails in the anxiety of 10 weeks, a sad reminder of all the sacrifices I’ve made to the God of Grad school) and I still had money left over to buy myself a bday gift. So i bought a EWBD (eensie weensie black dress), the slutty sister of the LBD. I would have bought a cute velvet dress that made me look like a schoolgirl but as my friends pointed out, balloon cut dresses are sooo last century, so instead I ended up getting a dress that showed enough cleavage to tattoo the complete works of Shakespeare on my chest in large print and still fit in Shantaram and the Chronicles of Narnia too. Not to mention, give my dad an aneurism. And as if the dress wasn’t tiny enough, it kept riding up when i danced/walked/made any physical movement and i had to keep tugging it down every few minutes.

But for all the excitement leading up to my bday, the actual event itself was an anticlimax. The party bus reached early and we were made to stand outside on the curb for a whole hour before we were let in. And did I say, most of us were wearing extremely pretty but extremely painful stilettos that were NOT made to be stood on for an hour? So that darkened my mood a little until i went in and checked the prices at the bar. Then my mood went totally black. 2 of my friends sponsored a round of grey goose shots as a bday gift (yeah it took 2 to sponsor 1 shot, so you can deduce the cost of living in this city) and my mood picked up a little and then we started dancing and that felt like eating ice cream after a long spell of pneumonia. And all in all, the club wasn’t out of the world. Any club in Chennai would be comparable minus the curfew. It did have cool performing girls in tiny red bikinis and fishnet stockings who danced on raised platforms and performed on hoops dangling from the ceiling, but otherwise, it could have been any other swanky new club in Chennai. So all you people back home, you are not missing much.

And my friends wanted to suprise me at 12 by getting the DJ to wish me (very original guys!) but the DJ was so drunk that he didn’t understand a word so they decided to suprise me by getting my friend’s American roommate to ask me out for a dance. Er.... I don’t know where the bday suprise is in that either but if i figure it out, I’ll let you know. So i danced and got tired and answered calls for a while and danced again and got tired again and decided to sit out the last 1 hour till the party bus left. And then i had a cheesecake cutting session back home and a mother of all skype sessions with some pals and a looonng phone conversation with a pal till around 5.30 in the morning. I think that was the best part of my bday. That and the sucky movie fest the next day with my pals and a long after-bday chat session with a friend with both of us just sitting in silence most of the time and listening to old rock songs and reading lamebook posts and laughing at the world.

So that was the fun part. That was the part you take pics of laugh and put on FB to show what cool friends you’ve got and what a rocking life you have. But there is also the part where I waited half a night for a lot of people to call who didn’t call, where i stood in the middle of the dance floor of one of LA’s most happening clubs, surrounded by throngs of people and yet felt completely alone because some of the people I loved the most wouldn’t/couldn’t take the effort to make 1 6 Rs call to wish me for a minute. And the part where I would have given anything to be with Anjana and spend my bday with her just like I have done every bday since I met her but I couldn’t because she had her exams. And the part where i spent most of my looonng phone conversation cribbing and trying not to cry about what a sad loser life I’ve got and how i have no friends.

So officially another trip around the sun comes to an end and like the e card Niru sent me, I haven’t really achieved much but hey I atleast didn’t die. A lot has changed in the last year. I cant even identify myself any more. That is something that simultaneously scares me and excites me. I have become a lot more mature and responsible and organized but I’ve also become a lot more cynical and a lot crueller. My priorities have shifted and changed until the terrain is no longer familiar. Have I learnt from the mistakes of the last year? Some yes, most no. Overall, I’d say the year has been great to me. 21 has been fun. 21 has been reckless. I miss it already. But along every step of my life, I have never lost a good thing to not be given a better thing. So heres to a better 22! Hic!