It was quite a blast this birthday. I took a day off from the office and was relaxing at home when I got a call from my friend saying that someone needed blood. Would I be interested? Of course, I was, so three of us and I went down to Fortis and donated blood. What a wonderful thing to happen on my b’day.

Colleagues in the Internet Edition hosted a lunch for me at the Press Club.

It really felt really great and at the lunch I was given a caricature that had been done by the cartoonist Sandeep Joshi. After lunch, I went home and started getting things ready for the open house.

The party started at 6 pm and this time we had chat and malpuras from Sai Sweets as the main attraction! Everyone was so surprised to see something like this at my place. It was really fun! My family was there, and many friends came …over 50 people!

A whole lot of people from my school batch came over. Seven out of 11 who were in our class! Many of us were meeting after 30 years and that was also very nice. Just imagine, people came from Ludhiana and Jallandhar to be together! The person who got us together was the one who lives farthest in distance, but closest in our hearts, Gurpreet Bhattal from Liberia, Africa.

This time, my Mother decided that she would come up and attend the party. She managed to climb up the stairs and stayed on till the very end. She finds it difficult to climb up the stairs because of her arthritis problem and this was the first time in three years that she had come up and seen how I had done up my house. She was very happy and so was I, especially since my friends came over and chatted with her and my Father. Some school mates were meeting them after 30 years!

My brother Ravi and his family were there too, as were old friends like the Sandhawalia family, Kishie and Neena, Baljit and Deena, Rajiv and Cheena, Arvind, Ranjit, Samiya…. All in all, a fun day for all of us.