The Three with the Zero

I adore many things about Aruna!

Aru (who is an angel mommy and won’t kill me for this!) is quintessentially the perfect friend a girl could have and a strict disciplinarian who very unhesitatingly pulls my ear on a lazy day. Her thick white shoulder-length hair (charmingly done like a little girl’s) makes me like her natural tones even more. Ever so often I wonder, will I be that pretty at 60? Or will I look like a white- haired lady ghost haunting highway scenes and shorelines?

Excited to see the future me, I definitely didn’t expect a frail white strand of white hair popping out of my scalp just before my birthday. Panicky and horror stricken I did what you must never do when you no like a strand of hair! I pulled it out violently, ending the problem for the time. And as I type my heart out tonight, I can feel a new spurt of growth of a fresh white silky, never-back-out white filament on my scalp.

That’s my 30 minus 1 birthday I guess, this year.

Apart from that, there was a cake, in fact two yummy cakes, one peppa pig, fairy lights, Infinity war movie show tickets, a tiny new plant for the living room and animals…lots of them!

Since I was jumping from a month prior to my birthday, I guessed all the possible surprises I could receive and left no choice for the husband to set up some décor. I raided his phone every day for a possible online purchase for the wife. And I even blabbered my favourite cake flavour and took him to the shop I wanted it from.

Indeed, a total sucker for surprises.

But in the midst of all the tomfoolery, there was a decision, a beautiful desire and a goal set for 2018. I was planning this since January and thank god for the May birthday, I couldn’t have waited any longer. Before we adopt a pet (or pets) somewhere down the line, we planned to spend the day with lots of animals and very less humans. Although sometimes I feel I am done with humans, but seriously it was a very intense desire to meet these wagging tails and four legged beings all in one place.

We met Tara, a dog with just two legs who permanently stands and moves in vertical position. We saw her playing with her piggy friends, with no clue of being any less than the other dogs. We met a little goat who happily galloped through different enclosures to meet and greet the cattle or the dogs and even the cats. We had our jaws open at the sight of a horse and a sheep best friends who never left each other. And I cannot forget the three legged cow waiting for her prosthetic leg to turn into reality one day. There were so many of them fighting against cancer, suffering from neurological disorder, going through chemotherapies and yet healing, recovering with those sparkling eyes.

What I realised that day is that, all you need is love to share and be full of it yourself.

That night though ended with me pointing at young couples romantically holding hands in the theatre versus me having to fight for arm space for two hours with my husband, it also ended with some coughing like a granny and a newly troubled knee pain.

Well, such is three with the zero birthday!