A Year from Second Love's Entry

We celebrated Nipur's first birthday. It was a small family get-together. I know Nipur is not old enough to know what this day signifies, so she did not take much delight in the celebrations. And that’s the reason I wanted to keep it small and simple. But she was really fascinated with the big balloon that we had attached to the center of the ceiling of Sagar Ratna. I will never forget the way her face gleamed with pride and happiness, you know the kind of smile one gives when one knows one is being appreciated and can’t hide the happiness, when we all clapped after she had blown the candle. She thought she must have completed some difficult feat. I can’t wait for her to grow up, when she’ll be old enough to decide who all should be invited to her birthday, and little girls in bright frilly frocks (though I have been tomboyish in my childhood, I somehow always visualize my little angel in frilly frocks) will flock our house, her friends, she’ll have that right to call ‘her very own friends’ and bring them to ‘her very own house’. I never had this priviledge as my grandma never appreciated us calling our friends over to our house for no good reason. But I’ll make sure that Nipur has that space and right. Puneet has created a facebook account for Nipur, whose password he has not shared with me. Knowing my temper, I think that he thinks that in some moment of fury, I might just delete her pics and comments, so it does make sense. Anyhow, he’ll be sharing the password with her when she’s old enough- with kids maturing so quickly these days in terms of becoming tech-savvies, I don’t think the day is far away. I don’t have any expectations of her staying with us, and I kind of feel that the first thing she might do (if not the first, then definitely at some later stage) is that she’s gonna change the password and perhaps block us from her private life. I am not being paranoid. It’s a very practical thing to do. Nor would I mind her doing this but I do hope we give her the kind of up-bringing where she feels free to approach us as her friends and we don’t get to know things from some third person. We’ll try to give her that comfort zone.