The Curious Child Turns 23

Growing up as a curious child, I always wanted to become a porn star. I didn’t feel such envy towards cricketers or pilots or canonized nuns. Physics entered later on; but like most things, a few years down, it didn’t matter.

I turned 23 last week. 23 on 23 July. My dad called me on June 23, and I had to convince him that my birthday was a month later. Anyway, he still insists that it’s June 23.

The Story Of Amaresh’s Birthday

My parents (and everybody else) wanted me to go to the most academically inclined tambrahm school in the vicinity, so they took me to this school in Mylapore, Madras called P.S. Senior. The Principal was named Alamelu. She was a bitch (I give people the chance of change). She used to remind me of the pumpkins with paintings of demonic faces hanging outside new homes, to ward off evil spirits and jealousy, and to welcome goodness and blah blah… well, I guess it worked in 1987.

Anyway, somebody took me to the school for admission, and they said that I had to be born in June to be eligible to join the school. So they dragged me out a month earlier than reality and went back to Alamelu with a June 23 fudged somewhere. Then Alamelu’s peanut brain worked out that I had to be born in the first week of June 1984 for my brain to be sufficiently larger than her’s to take on the rigor and torture that lay ahead in that school. So they went back to the fudging board and back to Alamelu with June 3. Thus began school. That’s the end of that story. Unless you want to know the story of how I overcame my 7 week handicap and scored 95 in the math exam.

Back to the other story… well, it’s over really… my dad simply has the dates mixed up and insists that I was out by June 23 1984.

Oh, and while we’re still on education, I’m into my final year of formal education. It’s apt that after 20 years of relentless torment, the education system finally decided to give me a year off. [The Wasted Year]

On my birthday, I counted 3 people who live in my institute who wished me the most beautiful birthday of my life on orkut, and then walked past me outside the mess like I didn’t exist.

So yeah, it’s been 23 years.