Birthday Celebrations

Some photos of my birthday, which was on July 13 are attached...this post is going to be on the tradition of birthday celebrations at IIMA. It is one of the most memorable activities for an individual on campus. Traditions are mostly common across dorms, but each dorm has its own unique variation of the birthday tradition.

The common aspects to most of the birthdays are:
1 Birthday bumps
2 Blowing candles on the birthday cake
3 Having a "guest of honour"(from the opposite sex :-)) to smear birthday cake on the face of the birthday boy/girl
4 Shouting "Kat lo, Kat lo" to drive away invitees from other dorms to let the dorm birthday activities continue in secret ;-)
5. Some other activities inside the dorm which would be sacrilege to reveal :D


Our dorm (D 21) banned the concept of birthday bumps last year, after one guy got his posterior kicked black and blue and could not sit comfortably for days on end...
Instead, we have this habit of throwing the birthday boy high into the air three times. The old campus dorms are restrained from doing this because their birthday celebration zones have ceilings :-).
This is followed by the guys lifting the birthday boy bodily, make him spread out a la superman and rush towards the guest of honour...then they take him towards the cake and encourage him to blow the candles from as far off as possible.

Currently, my description is sounding more like an extract from a cookbook recipe, but I really can't find words to describe the feeling of celebrating a birthday here. I mean, how do I describe the feeling when I am thrown into the air? It was as if I had hit orbit and wouldl never see terra firma again :-).
How can I describe the feeling of being wished a happy birthday a hundred times over? Probably satisfies the third level need in Maslow's hierarchy and gives me a positive 'stroke'. It may sound childish, but I like it and that is all that matters :-). Being the centre of attention is something that most of people crave for and this offers ample opportunity for the same...

Enough now... am getting a bit boring.

Btw, My next post is again going to be on information asymmetry, this time in the context of marketing and brand management...

Till then, Bye
Ranga