“Now That Was a Birthday Party!”
December is a busy month, starting with my birthday on December 2nd. I also have many friends who are Sagittarians (Birds of a feather flock together), and this year I sent out this essay that I read in a magazine two years ago. It is such a beautiful story that I decided to include it in This ‘n That for December, with proper credit for the source. (I took the liberty of making extra space between paragraphs for easier reading. ES)
“Now That’s a Birthday Party” by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush from Compassion in Action, Random House as reprinted in
Yoga International Magazine, Oct./Nov. 2004.
(I believe the narrator in this story is co-author Ram Dass.)
While in Madras in South India, I was asked by one of my guru’s devotees to join him and his family in celebrating his birthday. We were to meet outside my hotel entrance the next morning at seven-thirty. It seemed a strange time to celebrate a birthday.
He arrived in his car, which already contained his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and daughter and son-in-law. As is the case with all Indian transportation, there was room for one more. We drove through the city in the early morning toward the birthday celebration. I was mystified about what it would be.
On the far side of Madras, we entered the gates of what appeared top be a very poor ashram. In fact, it turned out to be the poorest ashram in the city. It was a home for the destitute aged and the mentally disturbed. My host drove the car into the middle of the courtyard. There were several hundred inmates standing there, each holding a tin plate.
When the trunk of the car was opened, there were huge covered pots of steaming rice and vegetables and wonderful Indian sweets. Each of us was given a pail and a ladle. We filled the pails again and again from the pots, serving the contents to all the people now sitting cross-legged on the ground in rows. When all had had their fill, the sweets were distributed, and the ashram served tea.
The pots empty and the utensils back in the trunk, we drove out of the ashram gates. In the car we were all silent, each alone with his or her reflections and images gathered from such an intense experience. There were tears in all of our eyes. My host broke the silence with the words, “Now that was a birthday party!”