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As a child, my favorite day of the year, as all children, was my birthday. My mother would plan at least two months in advance. Everything had to be perfect for her baby girl.
As I grew up, the need for crowds and gifts diminished and I told my parents I wanted to celebrate with them not with friends. And so, we did. We celebrated all birthdays, their anniversary and festivals with equal pomp, but we did it in our own way.
The year 2020 was the last time I celebrated my birthday with both mum and dad. My mom passed away exactly seven days after my milestone birthday. And from there my birthday was just another ordinary day. In 2023 after my father passed on, I decided that birthdays would never be celebrated the way I once loved to.
It was a loved one who did make it special. There was hope for a good celebration. And then something happened this year, exposing all my fears around relationships, friendships and more. The world was now just a gang of opinionated strangers waiting to crucify me for being innocent.
I was averse to the idea of any kind of celebration. I just didn’t want it. The original plan to go to Seychelles had been canned. I lost the deposit but didn’t care much about it. I just went ahead and decided it was not worth my peace.
On Easter, I witnessed in me a part that I had not encountered before. I impulsively told my cousin on a family call, “I’m coming to Europe.” They were ecstatic.
I have no idea till now as to how I committed to the idea in less than a minute. Every single trip has always had a purpose for me: to make a loved one happy, to go out with my family to a place they liked and many times to travel to the places my dad would have wanted me to see. This year was different. The girl whose purpose has been to bring joy to people’s lives was now met with a challenge: I had to find a purpose.
An hour after I committed to this preposterous idea, with no idea how I’d pull it off, I heard my favorite song, Tale as old as time, from the fairytale, Beauty and the Beast. In an instant I was transported back in time to 29 years ago when I promised myself that one day I would see the Beast’s library. It was a dream that like many other childhood dreams had been packed and kept in a distant corner of my heart. It was time.
I quickly checked google. Of course, the Beauty and the Beast library was in Copenhagen! I had found my purpose. I would live for myself; I would celebrate alone but I would do it for me this year. I realized that for the first time in my life, I had thought about myself, first. It was unnerving and yet quite liberating. I also felt foolishly selfish.
I applied for the Schengen visa and received it exactly on the seventh day of submitting my papers.
When the visa arrived at my door, the same song was playing:
- Tale as old as time
- Song as old as rhyme
- Beauty and the beast
It was as though God was reinforcing this reality; I deserved to celebrate myself.
Tickets were booked, the visa was in and multiple hotels across the cities I would be visiting were all confirmed. For a woman like me who believes in planning 9 months before for any long trip, I had achieved all of this in eight weeks.
On September 3, 2026, I was not alone. Instead, I was surrounded by my best friends at the library at the University of Fiolstraede, Copenhagen. I soaked myself in the fragrance of the old books that donned the shelves, shelves that left me awestruck. I looked around me, like a 7-year-old who had been given the greatest gift of all time. I wandered around the aisles, running a finger down the strong spine of these age-old portals of knowledge.
I found myself falling in love with my best friends; my books, all over again. I picked up a t-shirt – the last that would ever be printed in this lifetime with the old symbol of the University of Copenhagen with St. Peter on it.
Four celebratory hours later, I was off to the Den Bla Aquarium, the second largest in Europe.
I played with stingrays! And the gentleman who shot the video? A world-famous photographer who had come down with his family from Portland, Oregon.
As I sat down comfortably having walked all around, I watched a shark roam freely and soon its cousin the hammerhead shark and other magnificent sea creatures were gliding gracefully in the waters.
As I exited the Aquarium, I realized I didn’t know how to get back to my hotel having come a long way off to the coast. A young Indian IT professional named Naga helped me to get back to my final station, sacrificing his own need to return home after a long day of work. I thanked God for all these human angels who were planted everywhere in plain sight.
I finally got to Friedrick’s church, more popular as the Marble church of Denmark. In a year that had been written in strife and persecution of my ideals, values and dreams, all I asked God was for justice, hope and the return of those who I missed.
At the end of the day, I now had another adventure waiting for me across the bridge in Sweden! My birthday had only just begun. The love within me was back, my aura felt energized and I could feel what I hadn’t in months: I had begun to heal.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
