Birthday celebrations in Dubai hostel

Gopal Rathnam

IT Management, April, 09

“Its time to clean up your fridge” claimed a mail from his roommates. “Anything is welcome, as long as it is stale” it mentioned.

It was close to midnight. Every room in the hostel was busy. Every one, for once, decided to close their books and open their refrigerator to look out for leftover food stuff. Everyone knows that anything that was not stale was strictly not accepted.

I was sitting in the kitchen table and was deeply disappointed that my fridge was already clean. Thinking whether we should borrow something from the next room’s fridge, I was sipping my cup of coffee. People started gathering in the corridor, with a pack of ‘presents’ for the birthday boy.

At the stroke of midnight, the crowd roared “Happy birthday” and everyone frantically emptied their pack of presents on the birthday boy’s head. “Yuk!” he exclaimed, but more and more presents literally poured in.

At the end of it, everyone, in unison, started singing the birthday song for the birthday boy. A large chocolate truffle cake came out of nowhere, with a lighted candle in the middle of it.

[caption id="attachment_150" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Make Over"][/caption]

As soon as the birthday boy blew the candle off, all the cream in the cake were spread across his face. Like putting a chocolate spread on bread. For the first time that day, the birthday boy got something that is not stale! And for the first time, he did look sweet!!

By now, the birthday boy was covered from head to toe with yellow dal cooked two days back, left over curry from the nearby restaurant blended with camel milk and a chocolate cream topping on it! Happy birthday song went on for a few more minutes in the corridor as everyone showed the willingness celebrate big time with the birthday boy.

Everyone was awake to wish him at the right moment; everyone wished him, hugged him, kicked him, and applied cake on his face and what not? Quite a party it was. The birthday celebrations had become a tradition in the SP Jain Dubai hostel as the level of celebration is ever increasing from one birthday to the next.

These kinds of celebrations show that no matter how busy we are with the exams, no matter what time of the day or night it is, we, boys and girls in the hostel, are there for each other’s happiness and sadness and love each other the way we did on this particular birthday night.

At the end of the celebrations, we realized that another birthday was coming up in a couple of days.

“Start preserving your ‘presents’ from now” I shouted. “And on the next birthday, bring it on guys!”