Believing you are ordinary, you opt not to make a big deal about the day you were born, wanting your friends to wish you without a prompt. You have a thing or two to learn from the prime minister
An artist works on a painting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Kartavya Path in New Delhi on September 19, as part of the New Delhi Municipal Council’s attempt to create a 10-km artwork involving 40,000-plus artists, including Padma awardees, to mark Modi’s 75th birthday. Pic/PTI
Your ordinariness makes you fear you may be forgotten. And so, you swing between wondering who among your relatives and friends will remember to wish you on your birthday, and posing you wouldn’t be bothered if none did. In your heart, though, you know not getting even a single call would hurt you deeply, for birthday greetings, since childhood, symbolise your importance in the small world you inhabit. You have rationally negated the logic of equating importance with worthiness and worthiness with love, but the child in you still dreads not being remembered on your birthday.
Days before every September 17, for a decade now, you slip into envying Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as you pore over media reports on nationwide plans to celebrate his birthday. You think he must have no fear of being forgotten on his birthday, not even by his rivals, who, even though they deride him, make it a point to wish him every year.
The dread you have of being forgotten is of your own making. Your pride dissuaded you from stating the date of your birth in your social media accounts. That would have assured digital prompts to your followers to wish you. But you desire to be greeted without reminders, as a heartfelt expression of sentiments for you. This is why you don’t throw birthday parties, for the guests wouldn’t but remember greeting you.
You turn wistful on hearing that a prominent Delhi school has asked children to make e-cards and upload videos wishing the prime minister on his birthday. The school’s circular suggested they should in their greetings highlight a reform introduced by Modi that has had a significant impact on the nation. You are again reminded of your ordinariness, for you have never received a card appreciating the difference you made to a person’s life.
You suddenly remember long queues outside banks in the aftermath of demonetisation and migrant labourers walking home during the COVID shutdown. Remembrance can, indeed, be manipulated. But you also know nothing can make you feel as lonely as your birthday being forgotten, for it establishes your sheer unimportance. You belatedly remember you too have engaged in manipulation — for instance, promising your family a treat on your birthday. It’s a device for feeling special on a special day.
This self-knowledge turns you forgiving as you leaf through the newspapers dated September 17, 2025 — pages after pages of advertisements wishing the prime minister on turning 75. You note the names of those who issued them. You wonder: do they want to extract a benefit from Modi in return for remembering him? What makes them feel he’d be pleased? You think he’s perhaps no different from you, as much a child as you are in equating remembrance with worthiness and love.
Your expansive mood turns sullen as you check social media timelines. Dozens of celebrities remembering the prime minister’s birthday! From film stars to cricketers to business tycoons to, obviously, politicians, they have sent messages to the prime minister, with some describing their fleeting moments with him, or lauding him for leading the nation to scale the peak of glory by 2047. For sure, he can’t possibly share your fear of being forgotten.
But you then stumble upon chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand’s message, wherein he ecstatically describes how he was once treated to a delicious Gujarati thali by Modi. On re-reading the message, you notice it is addressed to Viswanathan Anand ji, not to Modi ji. He obviously forgot to substitute his name with the prime minister’s. In the bitterness oozing out of your ordinariness, you now know that Anand was commandeered to send his greeting to the prime minister, with even the text written out for him.
The discovery of Anand’s message is your eureka moment — it’s so silly of you not to have a birthday bash only because you want your friends to wish you without a prompt or pretext; you realise you shouldn’t be so insecure as to compulsively gauge your importance to them every year. You resolve you will, from now on, be as unabashed as Modi is about celebrating his birthday.
But you discern a problem, for the celebration of Modi’s birthday involves organising blood donations and cleanliness drives. Ordinary mortals cut cakes, but Modi, on September 17, launched an initiative that will have the government organise 10 lakh health camps for women, between September 17 and October 2. His gesture impresses you even though you wonder why the camps weren’t held at another time in the year. You then remember your grandfather, who’d give you money when you’d wish him on his birthday. Patriarchs have a keen sense of what makes love and loyalty work.
Your problem is your family and friends would baulk if you were to celebrate your birthday by inviting them to, say, donate blood. Just as poet Sahir Ludhianvi
thought that by building the Taj Mahal for his beloved, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan mocked the love of the poor, you too think ordinary birthday desires are caricatured every September 17. Fear, like love, has many expressions.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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