When I was a child I used to envy people who shared their birthdays with famous people. My best friend was always flexing about being born on October 11, which is, of course, Amitabh Bachchan’s birthday. Then there was my aunt who taught English, and so was very chuffed to be sharing birthday with William Shakespeare. My mum, whose life’s motto was ‘I want to Break Free’, was born on the September 5, the same date as Freddy Mercury.
I sulked mildly about not having a famous birthday fellow (or ‘hum-buddae’, as in humsafar or humraaz) for the longest time, till I realised, around the mid-2010s, that I had won the lottery as far as ‘hum-buddaes’ were concerned, because my birthday is on September 17, now being celebrated all over India as Vishwakarma Puja, as well as Narendra Modi’s happy birthday.
It has become a fortnight-long celebration, stretching all the way from September 17 to Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on October 2, neatly underlining the parity in their stature. All sort of policies and drives are unveiled—health camps for women, children and the elderly, blood donation drives, and sports festivals.
Imaging: Deni Lal
This year was Modi’s 75th, and my 55th, but he seemed so much younger than me—bounding around energetically, brushing aside any rumours of party precedents of retirement@75. Everybody, near and far, high and low, congratulated him on his landmark anniversary, but I was particularly impressed by two individuals who followed up their wishes with two very different sorts of birthday presents.
Donald Trump called at midnight, which, as we all know, is a privileged slot reserved for only the closest of buddies. Later, he tweeted that they’d had a ‘wonderful chat’ and hailed Modi as ‘my friend’. But two days later, he followed up his friendly call with a birthday present that immediately put one in mind of Javed Jaffrey’s immortal quip: “With friends like mine, who needs enemas?”
Slice it any way you like, call it a brain gain, a ghar vapsi, a mixed blessing or cite China’s ‘Sea Turtle’ phenomenon where techies returned from the US to enrich the homeland, the 100K fee on H1-B visas is a slap in the face of Indian diplomacy and everybody in the Indian diaspora who voted for our birthday boy’s bestie, Donald.
Shah Rukh Khan, too, wished Modi on September 17. Sporting a beanie cap, total sincerity and a naughty grin, he hailed the PM’s journey from rags to Raisina, his energy, his passion, and commitment to the nation. And the very next day, his company Red Chillies released a blockbuster series on Netflix, directed by his son Aryan, who spent almost a month in jail under the Modi regime in 2021, on drug possession and peddling charges which were finally dismissed because of lack of evidence.
Some people are hailing Aryan’s slick, self-trolling, funny-dark show about the world he grew up in a ‘flex’ against the birthday boy. This may seem a bit of a reach, but what else do you call a tremendously successful production that shuts up all the rightwing naysayers who indulged in the vilest of character assassination and called its creator a traitor and a nalla (no-good) nashedi nepokid a few years ago?
For my birthday this year, I scored a stunning bouquet of pink oriental lilies and giant sunflowers, a very bougie coffee machine with a big stack of coffee capsules, a lovely dinner party hosted by my sister, and five thousand rupees in cash from my housekeeper.
Overall, I feel I have done better than my ‘hum-buddae’.
editor@theweek.in