Chp 755. My Birthday :)

Just celebrated my birthday recently :)

This year, it was quite a different birthday celebration for me, mainly because my birthday fell on Easter. I did get a lot of invitations to go out and party on the eve of my birthday, which was a Saturday night.

First, there was the Starians Party hosted by my friend Kiripiri at Playboy where many of my Mizo friends were going. Then there was the party at T.W.T where my friend DJ Rajbeer personally invited me to celebrate my birthday there. And then there was always the option of calling my friends over to my place for some good time KP house partaay.

But the fact that the next day was Easter filled me with guilt to be spending the previous night that way. Don't get me wrong, I am not patronizing or acting like a saint here. I am the last person to be judging anybody when it comes to spirituality. Those who know me well, know what type of a person I am. I'm not the type who regularly attends Church services, nor am I the type who uploads a selfie with the caption "Thank you Lord Jesus".

But there are certain things I hold sacrosanct, where I draw a fine line, and this was one of them. No worldly pleasures at least during Easter.

I eventually did get to celebrate my birthday the next day with my Prayer Cell family and it was awesome :)

And so on the eve of my birthday, I got home from work, tired and completely drained because we had just launched our latest game (will talk more about that in another post).

I did things as usual, cooking my special Mizo bai along with my last 2 remaining pieces of smoked pork that I was saving up for my birthday :) Ate dinner, watched an episode of "The Rookie" (the season finale, so sad), and then I got ready for bed. I wanted to sleep before the clock struck 12. But just was I was tucking myself under my blanket, around 11:50 PM, my door bell rang!

I immediately knew it was related to my upcoming birthday because nobody turns up at my apartment unannounced just like that. My head immediately spun on who it could be, who all knew it was my birthday that night. DJ Rajbeer knew, but he was busy playing at TWT. Nitin and Teresa knew but they were busy throwing a farewell dinner for Krossi. My dear friend and neighbour Rini knew but she also knew I didn't want a party this time.

And so I switched on the lights again and walked drearily towards my door. Taking a deep breath, I opened my door, expecting some of my Mizo friends to be out there yelling "Surprise!"

Instead, there was this delivery man standing outside my door with a large box. He was grinning from one extreme end to the other and then wished me a happy birthday! It was a surprise birthday cake delivery from my sister Dinpuii!

Aaaaahhhh. :)

So sweet of my sister.

So she had the whole piece above specially made and to be delivered at my house right before 12. The "1 brother 2 sisters sumo" is an inside joke she and my other sister Mazami made a long time ago about starting a Sumo service with that name if we ever ended up living in Mizoram together :)

I did cut the cake that night, but since I was alone, I had to arrange the chairs of my dining table to hold my phone which was on timer, as you can see from the very straight-angled focus. Yeah I did a lot of retakes too :D

And so I slept with a very happy and contented thought.

The next day, I woke up with a big smile and wished myself a Happy Birthday :) And then it was time to get ready for Easter service. Since it was my big day, I decided to spurge a bit and ordered breakfast from Starbucks :P

Yeah, still, it was an overpriced piece of sh*t to me. The butter croissant above at 250 bucks was laughable at best. But their Espresso Frappuccino was awesome as always. Yummm.

I quickly got ready for Church and soon Nitin, Teresa and Rini came to pick me up. Off we went to Church.

The PMCF Easter service was wonderful. Miriami, of the Gosi Miriam fame, sang a beautiful solo, even though she started the note wrong :P And then the Praise and Worship team did an excellent job of pumping up the members of our parish, as they led us through joyful songs of Resurrection with complete body action and dance movements. "A tho leeeeh taaa... A tho leeeeeeeh taaa..." It was such an amazing experience.

Our PMCF Chairman Pu Chawnghminga also delivered a very good and reflective Easter sermon, while keeping it brief and concise. He cracked a couple of jokes now and then which was a really good method of getting everybody's attention.

After the Church service, we all headed outside where we were treated to these colourful Easter eggs painted by the children. Yumm.

I met a couple of friends and we all wished each other a Happy Easter. Now here's something funny. I was so used to wishing people who wished me a Happy Easter with "Happy Easter to you too" that eventually when people came to wish me a Happy Birthday, I ended up saying "Happy Birthday to you too" :D :D :D It happened at least 5 times by mistake and we all laughed so much.

Our Amosa Prayer Cell took a group photo together in front of the Church :) Click/Tap on all photos to enlarge them in high resolution.

With my Undri fam and my longest known friends here in Pune, Daniel and Zodini.

As I was taking a pic with my Viman Nagar fam and KP fam, Ahnei sprinted to be in the photo as well :D

He made it :D

With two beautiful sirens :) Lucky me, and at the same time, unlucky me.

We had our Amosa Prayer Cell meet later in the evening as we had to wish farewell to our extremely active members Debbie, Remruati, Genevieve, Jacqueline and Gospeli. They had all just completed their final year college and were about to head back to Mizoram for good. They will be missed so much. I took a couple of their photos as this was the last time they would be coming to this Church again.

Genevieve.

Remruati.

Jacqueline.

Debbie with the rest of the girls.

And with that, our Easter service was over. While Teresa and Baby headed out to buy meat and vegetables for the night's dinner, I headed back home as I had to pick up the Birthday cake my sister sent.

I was really hungry when I reached home so I ordered a 12" Pepperoni Pork Pizza from Greedy Man Pizzeria. Yay, another self treat birthday food :)

Finally, around 7 PM, Rini came over to my place and the two of us left for the Amosa Prayer Cell Meet along with my large Birthday cake. I was still stuffed from the pizza, I should have never eaten that much just before dinner! :D

At Pi Baby's house, Teresa and the others were busy cooking dinner. Beef, Chicken and Mizo delicacies, yummmm!

Soon, we started our Prayer Meet. Remruati was our Chairwoman for the night, while the others like Debbie and Jacqueline also had different responsibilities. Genevieve and Gosie couldn't make it as they already had other plans.

Our PMCF treasurer Pari and PMCF exec member Vincent gave the outgoing trio a very touching tribute and advice while reading prominent passages from the Bible. Rojo, Chhantea and I too stood up and said a few parting words to them, and finally our Amosa Prayer Cell secretary Mahlua gave them the final farewell message.

This was followed by a ceremonial parting gift presented to them by our Amosa Prayer Cell Leader Pi Baby-i.

We closed our meet with a group prayer, where the different topics to pray for were announced beforehand, ranging from sick members of our community to the outgoing members of our Prayer Cell to the terrible Sri Lankan Church and Hotel bombings which took place earlier that day. One of the topics for the group to pray for was me! :D It was a prayer thanking God for my birthday and for my future well being. I felt sooo awkward, but at the same time it felt so good to have the entire group pray for me :)

We ended our Prayer Cell Meet with the Lord's Prayer, and then we took our traditional group photo.

As you can see from above, the first photo of this post is an edited version of this one. Let's see that photo one more time :D

On the occasion of my birthday, I made all of us wear party hats, except for Debbie, Remruati and Jacqueline who are waiting for their exam results. This is my way of wishing them that they will definitely graduate with flying colours when their results come out.

Nitin and Teresa surprised me with a lovely birthday cake, and they made sure the cake had a Game of Thrones theme! Love them so much for this.

Here is a short video of me blowing the candles out :D

After that it was dinner time. The food looked sooooo good.

Unfortunately, I was still full from the Pizza I had earlier, so I couldn't eat anything. Once everybody was done with their dinner, we cut the other cake my sister had sent me and had it as dessert. Everybody was indeed full.

I also went next door and met my dear friends Margaret and Hriata along with their children and distributed my birthday cake to them as well. In spite of all that, there was still a large portion of cake remaining. That's how big the cake my sister ordered for me was.

And so, that was how I spent my birthday. It was such a different feeling. All my life, I don't think I have spent my birthday that spiritually, and I feel like this empty void inside me had been filled (I'm not talking about the Pizza :P). I am truly lucky to have such a loving Prayer Cell family here in Pune and here is to wishing everybody especially our five outgoing members the very best in life.

Take care for now everyone, God Bless.