It was Sowmya’s birthday today and she it really started the night before when at midnight she was bought down or rather pulled down in front of the mess and made to cut the cake. The tradition is that the room-mate gets the cake. Shubhi Sood had to do the honour and so she went with Saurabh Garg (September the 22nd fame … http://mdigurgaon.blogspot.com) to get the cake from sector 14 cake shop. Sowmya didn’t get much of a chance to realize what was happening after she cut the cake on the table in front of the mess. She was plastered with a mini cake which was made especially for the occasion. Then someone got a bucket of water and dunked sowmya with it. To our delight Sowmya’s senior student Mentor (Sonar Gilani) happened to be there and since we couldn’t really give Sowmya Birthday Bumps … he was made the reluctant victim. So now Sowmya is all plastered with cake and wet with cold water (Did I mention that the water was not normal … it was taken from the ground floor water cooler, so nobody would obviously let Sowmya off without her singing a song. So the poor girl had to stand there in the mess that she was and then sing a beautiful song.
We went off to sleep somewhere (nowadays I have lost track of the actual time we go off to sleep) but it must have been sometime around 3.30. The next morning we had class as usual. After that there was a blood donation camp organized by Samaritans which is the community service society of MDI. I had volunteered for the afternoon slot and that included sitting at the desk and registering people to donate blood and also helping them with refreshments after they had donated blood. That was a customary glass of glucose supplement and some glucose biscuits because eventually at every blood donation camp you are bound to find someone who will faint.
So there I was helping people out and watching some people faint. Actually they came up to donate blood was a big achievement in itself. With all due respect to some ladies of the class … they showed great courage in turning up for the donation but had to be turned back for lack of proper weight requirements. But kudos to them also to show so much enthusiasm. They had planned to collect about 120 bottles of blood by the end of the day but to everybody’s disappointment, they collected only about a 100 or so. I also wanted to donate blood but previous experiences told me otherwise because once before I had donated blood for a cousin and then when I got up after I had finished my vision just blanked out and then I had to have about two glasses of juice to get me back to normal strength. As it is, I was already tired I decided against donating blood that time.
I forgot to mention that all this time Sowmya was sitting there with this great smile on her face and helping people out. She was not allowed to donate blood so she decided to help out by sitting there the whole time, on her birthday. And the fact that it was birthday was exactly the thing that made her so happy. She had told me the earlier day itself that she was so happy that she would get to do something meaningful on her birthday. I only wish the world was full of people like her … I guess that is asking too much but I at least wish that it had a whole lot more people liker her.
So I went off after completing my duty and had a nice sleep. I woke up when I realized that I had to submit my mark sheets attested by some government official in the PGPM office or my name would be stuck off the register, so I had received a mail. I tried my luck around this government hospital but had to return back. I came back to find some four other people who had not gotten the mark sheets attested and so we all went to the office and cried before them that there was no way we could get them attested at such a short notice and so we got permission to get them attested by Mr. Prateek Agrawal … http://prateek2410.blogdrive.com
After the whole mark sheets deal, I was free and so I decided to donate blood once in for all which I did. The blood donation part I have no problem, but after that I knew that I shouldn’t be getting up soon. But that I did and so my vision blanked out again. So I lay down again and this time I lay down for good. Saurabh actually took my picture while I am lying down and it is a picture of one really scared guy. But I got all right after about half an hour, two bananas and one glass of glucose.
Sowmya wanted to take us out for dinner or some treat but then we all told her that she was already looking really dead and she had already had a nice birthday and so she should be going off to sleep rather than taking us out.
I am back after a short nap in my room and subsequent dinner. I made sure that I had many helpings of ice cream to make up for my lost health by course of blood donation. So an eventual birthday it was for Sowmya, the doctor who was conducting the camp also messaged her late that night saying that he really appreciated the efforts of sincere people like her who put meaning into a day of their life … be it their birthday or not.
