I won’t bother to remember your birthday

Azhoni had his birthday some time back. Samuel will be having his in the coming month. I think they don’t remember mine and I don’t expect a phone call or an sms, forget about a Birthday present. 

 

How did I know their birthdays? Azhoni came over to stay a night with me and he told me. He didn’t say it to let me know, ‘oh, my birthday passed recently and you didn’t even wish me’. It was for a very different reason. And I didn’t bother to ask him the date so that I can remember the next time. He told me of Samuel’s next month because his UPSC interview is said to be falling on his birthday. When the date arrives, I am going to ask about the interview, but I am not going to say nice things because of his birthday. 

We have discussed this before and we seem to share a similar view about birthdays. We just don’t bother about each other’s birthday. This doesn’t mean that we hate birthday parties. It seems Azhoni had a party arranged for him. And Samuel was there. But the point here is that we don’t look at birthdays as important days. Maybe for us, every day is as important. Maybe we think that we are born when we wake up from unconsciousness every morning. The friendship that we have doesn’t depend on being nice to each other, although we do say nice things and care for each other. 

We do not keep account of how much money we have spent on each other. That is nothing unique in a friendship. But I think the money that Samuel has received is quite substantial. He hardly gives them back. Haha. But I have gained more from him. This is not about investment and returns but if I have to convert into money what I learned from him, think of how much you have to spend by going to Cambridge for a degree. I don’t even have a passport by the way. So, we don’t bother about financial transactions either. When someone is in need, we try to dig in and see how we may help each other. 

If I face a crisis, I know they’ll be there. Physically it becomes a challenge when one is in a village near London, one is in Delhi, and one is in Kohima. But if I go to visit them and I am tired, I know they will willingly sleep on the floor for me. When Azhoni came home, I drove to his village to meet him. He came to stay the night with me this week. In any crisis, Samuel will be the first I will call. And so on. This is special because even with friends who are in the same town, it is becoming quite difficult to meet each other. 

This is not about the mushy feelings of friendship that we have. It is not about ‘birds of the same feather flock together’. We are very different people; our temperaments and personalities are very different. Our friendship, I think they will agree, is living out the covenant community that Jesus instituted for his believers. The sharing of lives among believers written in the book of Acts comes to mind.