Rebirth Day

It is her birthday today. She hates it. Not because she doesn’t like to celebrate, but because of the ghosts of memories associated with it from another time.

She was twelve, brimming with an almost unbearable excitement. Today, she’d finally shed the last remnants of childhood, leaving behind the silly toys and pig tails to become a real grown-up – at least in her mind. For weeks, the house had buzzed with secret whispers and hushed plans, every deliberation over cake flavors and party games a promise of the special day to come.

Special it was, but for all the wrong reasons. Her favorite Ajji – Dad’s mother, the softest lap and kindest smile – chose that very day to die. Her father, who doted on his mother with a devotion that bordered on worship, was so utterly shattered he didn't even see her, let alone wish her. Mom, aunts, her brother – everyone offered sorrowful murmurs about her birthday becoming sad, promising a party on 'another day.'

She cried. Not just because her balloons lay deflated and her cake uncut. A sharp, ugly shard of hatred pierced through her for her beloved Ajji, for choosing this day. And that feeling, like a stubborn stain, never faded. Year after year, her father's birthday wish was an afterthought, delivered through a fog of his own maudlin grief for his dead mother.

It has been ten more summers now, each one a heavy weight marking the somber anniversary. Her real birthday remained shrouded in an inescapable gloom. But she couldn't endure it anymore. She wanted it all to change.

Desperate, she called her best friend's sympathetic mother. She, a formidable bureaucrat, was her godmother; someone she looked up to for encouragement, support, and motivation.  The second mother, without hesitation, offered to help. "We'll change it, officially," the woman had said, her voice firm and reassuring. No more trauma, no more drama on her special day. A crazy, freeing thought even surfaced: perhaps she wouldn't feel so bitter about her Ajji anymore.

But then, the thought of her father solidified, unyielding. No, she wouldn't forgive him. The acidic taste of bile rose in her throat, a familiar, burning reminder that some wounds, no matter how much you try to redefine them, refuse to heal.