On (or rather a lot after) the sober ocassion of turning 40

I am in all probability wrong about the "turning 40" bit; I mean I really don't know if I have completed 40 years on this planet and am now into my 41st or...

Well, there you go, that's as clear a confession as any that I suck at figures, dates, etc.

But then, 40 or 41, among other things, I am no longer a young poet, I have survived yet another birthday (and all the attendant loneliness) and am once again assailed by thoughts dealing with the poverty of my achievements...

But then, maybe some of us are destined to be underachievers, huh?

And as birthdays go, it wasn't one that bad.

I had the privilege of getting to touch the feet of my parents and that of a temple visit with both of them. And since I was shaved (and also looking surprisingly curly-haired and boyish), it did feel a bit like the old (rather my younger) days.

I had the privilege of "running free" to do a bit of birding (mostly in the pursuit of Lil' Blues, the Common Kingfishers who live barely half a km from my place).

I had the privilege of the deeply felt happiness of seeing Amma stop working early in the afternoon (on my strictures, entirely) and of eating Pulagam and Paravanum.

And, with the evening light turning golden, I had the privilege of company and conversations of friends who seem to surprisingly still find me interesting enough. Out of doors with a cold bottle in the hand :-)

How old would he have been, if he was around? What would he have presented me? How would he have self-deprecatingly made fun of the threadbare nature of his and my finances? What other "entrepreneurial ideas" would we have discussed and got high on?

I will never know, but yes the mind does imagine a lot of things that are utterly impossible. But I do know that I still miss him...and that the missing is one of searing, gut-wrenching pain on such days.

Happy birthday to me, Chandra, wish you were here. And I am sure you said cheers from up there.