Since I turned 70 recently, I thought I would try and remember birthdays of mine when I was younger.  But now, try as I might, I cannot remember a single one of my birthdays as a child.  The only birthday I do remember was when I turned 15, in 1966, my last year in school, when we appeared for the Senior Cambridge exams, equivalent to O levels at that time.

I was the youngest in the class and I recall more of what my friends did in school.  Possibly I remember this birthday also because I kept a diary through a large part of that year, which I still have with me, and that certainly jogs my memory.  I remember getting my first lipstick and two lovely saris.  

Somehow, what comes to mind are Christmases.  Often, while we were in Bombay, we spent Christmas in Pune with my mother's sister, who lived and worked there.  We decorated the house, though I don't remember a Christmas tree as such.  The highlight was Christmas breakfast, mainly because my aunt had a tape recorder and she would proceed to turn it on in the morning and our singing and breakfast conversation was all recorded.  Those were those big spool tapes and she had a huge collection.  She would then play some of the recordings from previous Christmases.

As I get older, I find that the events I remember are less and less.  But there are little vignettes, snapshots in my mind, of places, things and people and those pictures are very sharp.

It is a pity that I can't remember birthdays, because my mother was the sort who did celebrate our birthdays in some way.  Ah well, I guess my children will remember more about their birthdays as, by then, cameras were ubiquitous and so photographs abound.