Much Ado About My Date of Birth and Birthday

Two decades ago, I got a Bhutanese passport. I needed it to come to Germany. Once here, I realized that my passport had just the year of my birth, and no date, no month. This turned out to be a horror while wagging through the swamp of German bureaucracy. By the way, this was the reason why my wife and I got married in Denmark and not in Germany. In order to preclude further complications, I would fill in all kinds of forms by leaving the fields for date and month blank. After a week or so, I would receive the forms back. The reason would be that the forms have been filled in incompletely. So, I decided to put zeroes in places of date and month. Again I would receive the forms back. Why? The forms have been filled in erroneously. I dared not invent a date and month of my birth because that the data would no longer conform the data in my passport. So what do I do? I drafted a letter for my elder brother confirming that I was born on such and such a day and in such and such a month. It would take weeks to send and receive such a signed letter. But in the mean time, I happened to see in some official documents where it is stated that it would suffice if the date of birth is attested in some official documents. I dug up some old documents and discovered that my school leaving certificate issued by the high school principal had specified my date of birth. Thus I decided to get this date established as my date of birth in the entire German bureaucratic network. But by then already two dates of birth were in circulation. I would receive two social security numbers and the like. In course of time, however, I managed to establish one date of birth. But my passport still had no date of birth. My next goal was thus to get that settled date of birth into my passport. So while renewing the Bhutanese passport, it was ensured that it bore the date of birth. Finally, I had a consistent date of birth. Or, did I? Actually not.

In Bhutan, at least in those days, when a child is born, parents would ask an astrologer to calculate the “birth astrology” (skyes rtsis). By the way, there is also something like “astrology of the deceased” (gshin rtsis). I must have had my own birth astrology but after the untimely demise of my father, my mother had lost trace of it. But she remembered when I was born. When I was first enrolled in the primary school, the memorable day I still remember vividly, my mother told the  headmaster, who was a Bhutanese from Khaling in Eastern Bhutan, that I was born on the 10th day of the first month of Fire Sheep Year (of the lunar calendar). Obviously the headmaster must have made some rough guess and set my date of birth sometime in the beginning of February. I do not think there was such a thing as calendric conversion table. This date, reckoned by my headmaster, came to be transmitted in all my school documents, and finally into my passport. But one question still lingered. Was I really born in the beginning of February? 

In those days Bhutanese children had no birthday parties, no birthday presents, and in fact children are not supposed to be the central of attention. It is not that parents did not love their children. Parents loved their children without pampering and spoiling them. I still see wisdom in this pedagogy. My experience is that mothers as a rule tend to love their children more than fathers do. Of course, exceptions confirm the rule. There is even a somewhat sad saying in Bhutanese: “An unfortunate child loses its mother first.” If a child loses its mother, the father would remarry and the step-mother is proverbially suspected to be unkind to the children, who are not hers. But here, too, I have personally observed excellent exceptions. Bhutanese children those days had no Kindergarten, no expensive toys. But on the other hand, the whole forest, pastures, grassland, nay, the whole earth, stood there at their disposal as their play ground. They crafted their own toys, they invented their own games. I remember that we would build temples, perform religious rituals, festivals, marriages, funerals, and so on. But we had no birthday parties. I never had a birthday party until I arrived Germany as an adult twenty years ago. 

One evening in Germany, my wife informed me that we were going out to eat. I was not quite ready practically and psychologically. I was a bit reluctant. She seemed decided. So I hastily put on some shabby clothes and we set off. We went to the Eppendorf area. As we entered an Italian restaurant, I was surprised to see four German friends of hers waiting at a reserved table, and the table was strewn with flower petals and lentil seeds. It took a while for me to realize that it was my birthday. My wife has converted  my date of birth in lunar calendar (i.e. 10th day of the first month of the Fire Sheep Year) into the Gregorian system according to Dieter Shuh’s conversion table, and it turned out that my date of birth does not fall sometime in the beginning of February but sometime in the second half of February. So, now I have two birthdays. One is official and the other unofficial but real. The President of our University sends me a letter greeting me on my official birthday. Since then we celebrate my birthday on my unofficial but real birthday. At any rate, the first time I celebrated my birthday organized by my wife, I received several presents, and friends all started to sing in a chorus the birthday song. The cutest thing was a heart-shaped wooden candle stand with number standing erect. I soon realized its significance. That was my first birthday ever! It was as if I was only one year old! I was not used to so much love and so much attention! On the one hand, I felt so embarrassed to be the center of everybody's attention and on the other hand, I was touched to the core by the affection and attention!

As someone who grew up not celebrating one’s birthday, I still feel awkward of celebrating my birthday. I still feel bad to be the center of people’s attention. Maybe it is a false humility of mine. Excepting the bodhisattvas, all of us ordinary people (pṛthagjana) are to some degree narcissistic. I have a feeling that celebrations of birthdays slightly feed into our narcissism. Just the other day, Facebook suggested that I should make my date of birthday public. I did not pay heed to it. Is it because I have a false sense of humility? May be. The main reason is that I do not want my Facebook friends to feel obliged to wish me a happy birth day! My wife thought we should celebrate my 50th birthday. But I was not quite excited. But at the behest of some members of her family and friends, we celebrated twice! All in all, so long as we manage to keep our inherent narcissism in check, birthday celebrations do also remind us the affection and attention that our loved ones give us and teach us to be grateful!