लाेकपाटी न्यूज– Keshav Gharti magar
The Birthday comprises two words i.e. Birth and Day. The former means the process of bearing offspring while the latter one means time or period. In other words, a birthday means the anniversary of the birth of the person. But it is very difficult to define the birth if we seriously think of it from different perspectives. It is said that where there’s a birth, there is a death. To say clearly in biological way, we humans are born to die. But our eastern philosophy says that only physical bodies die not the soul because the soul is the living entity.
In other words, it is unborn, unbreakable, invisible and immovable. So, it is very complicated and complex to define the birth therefore I don’t want to enter into this issue. Here I am only expressing my views on what I have seen with my own eyes and understood by mind about celebrating birthday.What is a birthday? why is it celebrated? Is there any compulsion for people to celebrate it or not? who do celebrate it and why? Are there any distinctions and connections between celebrating birthdays and remembering birth dates or not? Like these above-mentioned questions, multiple questions come in our mind if we think seriously about it.
This is the 21st century. The 21st century advocates the modern concept of individualism, liberalism, freedom and so on. So, most of people love celebrating birthday because they think that they are just following the modern time and trend. In fact, there may be lots of pros and cons of this issue. But I think the matter of celebrating birthday is not bad thing because it is our beginning. So, to remember the beginning, people celebrate their birthdays. But there is not any uniformity in the modes of celebrating birthdays in our context. On the one hand, some people celebrate their birthdays only by cutting cakes in their own homes/rooms where as some people organize the grand party to celebrate it. Some people simply celebrate it by eating chicken, fish and meat with rice at their own home/rooms. Similarly, some people celebrate it only by distributing chocolate to their friend and relatives. So, people celebrate it in different ways. On the other hand, the poor and uneducated people neither remember their birthdays nor have they money to celebrate it. Rather, they are dying every year without a tablet of Paracetamol.And it is very hard for us to get any information regarding this issue. It means that celebrating birthday is not a compulsion but an option. Therefore, I think that the matter of celebrating birthday should always be meaningful and purposive. It shouldn’t be made meaningless, expensive and imitative. It is said that every person in this world is supposed to have come by taking certain kinds of traits to fulfill his or her mission. So, we humans should be committed as well asdedicated to accomplish our own missions. Therefore, while celebrating birthday, we should not forget our mission of life at any cost.
Well, let’s think for a while, when a baby is born in a family, extra happiness is seen on the faces of all family members especially on the face of the mother. There is a saying in this regard that giving birth to baby is one of the biggest dream of every woman. So, every mother should be considered as the living god per our eastern culture. So, she should always be respected whether she is ugly, poor, uneducated and so on.
Those people who are educated, modernized, live in cities area, wealthy and very good at blind imitation of other people’s culture or trends, celebrate their birthdays with great fun, joy and happiness. But those people who are uneducated, live in rural areas and are under the line of poverty, don’t remember their birth dates. Thus, they don’t celebrate their birthdays. Their minds are always centered on what to eat in the morning and what to eat in the evening. Additionally, they always busy with their domestic works which are not productive in a real sense. In other words, their domestic works are not seen productive. It means they are deprived of seeing the face of money when they need it really. Because of the lack of small amount of money, they are unable to send their offspring to school and their children become uneducated consequently. In such kinds of adverse condition, how can they celebrate their birthdays? As I was also born and grew up in a rural area, I have seen such kind of adverse situation in and around my own community. Conversely, to some people, a birthday is a time to show off their status, time to enjoy by spending lots of money and organizing the parties and time to connect and reconnect with friends and relatives. So, it can be said in short that there are mainly two class of people in our society i.e. the rich and the poor. And the class even here badly affects it as well.
We all know that the birthday or birth date comes only one day in a whole year. So. some people celebrate their birthdays while others only remember their birth dates as mentioned in different kinds of paper. So, if those people who don’t know when they were born, remember only birth date and consider their birth date as birthday where as people remembering when they were born, celebrate their birthday as their birth date too. It means even if birthday and birth date are the same, there is a difference between celebrating birthday and remembering birth date in our context.
Although most of the people celebrate birthday happily, the modes of celebrating it depend upon the class of the family too. Higher and middle class people celebrate or may celebrate birthday grandly or moderately but lower class people may not celebrate it because of financial problem in their family. They must be satisfied with themselves or in other word they must do compromise. Not only on birthday, but they must do compromise in daily life as well. Certainly, a birthday is special day for everyone but all the people do not have a fate to enjoy it. Here, we shouldn’t forget that birthday celebration relates to mental thing rather than physical one i.e. medium of happiness. If we are happy from within, no need to celebrate the birthday because we at a time hear that some people first celebrate the birthday grandly per their financial capacity and commit a suicide later in the same day.
At last, I would like to say that although we celebrate our birthdays, we shouldn’t spend lots of money on this occasion under various titles. Before spending lots of money on birthday celebration, let’s think about those children who are deprived of going to school because of financial problem in their family. Suppose if we spend 10000.00 rupees during our birthday celebration, why not to donate 10000.00 to them? If we donate 10000.00 to two children, they both will have enough money to go to school for 1 year. Therefore, let’s always imagine their faces and future when we are ready to expend moneys on our birthday. In order to help them, any kinds of fund can also be established. If we don’t celebrate our birthday because of many reasons including financial problem, let’s start to do good things even if it is for ourselves, with a new and just mission or goal. Lastly let me cite a quote I love much “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another”- Charles Dickens
{Today is my birthday/birth date. I don’t celebrate my birthday because I have not celebrated it yet. I try to be much better from today to others.}
–Keshav Gharti Magar (BSW, 1st year, R.R. Campus, Kathmandu)
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