A Unique 75th Birth day celebration

A Unique 75th Birth day celebration

Mangalore Today News Network

By Prof. Narendra Nayak, Managing Trustee, Aid Without Religion Trust.

Mangalore, Aug 7, 2012: Prema Bhaktha wanted to celebrate her 75th birthday in a meaningful way. After having spent all her life battling odds and the barbs of the society she had lost all her beliefs in supernatural powers and did not want to spend any money on pujas and such rigmarole associated with such celebration as she did not believe in any such and secondly she did not want the priestly class to profit out of it!

 

When she approached our Aid Without Religion Trust for suggestions for a celebration, I told her that the best way to do that would be to feed hungry children and she readily agreed. So, her birthday celebration was with the children of Gandhi Nagar Govt. Higher Primary school, Mangalore with each child right from the kindergarten to the 8th standard being  given a sumptuous piece of cake and a crisp vegetable puff  which they thoroughly enjoyed with relish hungry children show for food, particularly since many of them come from socially and economically backward sections of the society.

As we were leaving the premises tears were rolling down the cheeks of Prema who told me that it was the best birthday celebration in her life. Her daughter Dipti who had come down with her two children Nikhil and Mihir all the way from United States to wish her mother happy birthday in person nodded in agreement and told me that she had never seen her mother so happy on any birthday.  celebration. So, how about it folks? Celebrate your birthday with something for the needy than splurge on celebrations? With the hooligans raiding birthday parties in the name of cultural degradation and display of immorality, this would be a good way, unless they raid such celebrations too under the pretext of cakes and puffs being against Hindu culture!