Ever since I can remember I’ve hated my birthday. It’s not that I have anything against being born, trust me. It’s just that it’s your day.  With all this added attention, something is bound to go wrong- either it happens, or you make it happen!
Let’s start from the beginning.
February third 1997, cold as hell in Delhi and it’s the crack of dawn. Everybody is screaming, more than my mom, my grand mom has gone into one of her panic attack modes, heaving and flopping around like a fish out of water. Great. What a brilliant start! Fast forward to the part where we finally get to the hospital and its happening! Wait, wait, wait. Were things going right? Uh, no, that can’t happen.
“IT’S STUCK!”
Yes ladies and gentlemen. I was a big baby. More importantly, a stuck, big baby. There was no going back; we were too far in the delivery, but what now? Ah forceps, those giant teeth to help a new born out of the womb. Risk one: I die. Risk two: I become retarded.
Good, good. Prospects are lookin’ up!
Fast forward again; turns out by some stroke of luck this gigantic, normal, red baby has been squeezed out of a 4 feet 11 inch oompa loompa. We are all happy to be alive at the end of this arduous journey.
Skip a few years a-a-a-a-nd we are in February 3rd 2000. In Singapore now, the whole family heads out for a celebration to the water park!  Prancing around in my new bright pink, polka dotted, frilly awesome-sauce swimsuit I run out to the water. Splash, splash, giggle, scream, giggle, splash. Yay. Wait…what’s that? Nothing. Face down in the water. One second. Two seconds… something’s wrong here.
Yes. Almost died (again). On my birthday.
…Until I was saved in the nick of time by my mother, resuscitated, I would live to see my next birthday! Whoopee.
Jump in time to 2007. We have now done a loop going from Singapore to America to The United Arab Emirates and back. New school, middle of the last semester. 2 weeks before the final exams, my classmates are studying electrolysis and memorising Hindi literature – I know not what chemistry or the Hindi alphabet even is. But, I do know long division.
February 3rd 2007 – Final exam day for….drum roll…. Hindi and chemistry! (Come on, this is basically death – let’s face it. I was the luckiest person alive!)
By now you get the gist but my luck has never been as accurate as it was last year. Sweet 16. The big whopper -among the others, namely 18 and 21 – life is downhill (or even more downhill in my case) from there.  Laid up in bed the night before ambushed by my first asthma attack in years; I felt like I had been sober 3 years before I knew what it felt like again. (Guess it’s time for Asthmatics anonymous).
Fifteen minutes to midnight – almost my birthday and I crawl out of bed, uneasy with the feeling of my dinner inching up my oesophagus. I made it to the door of the bathroom before the volcano erupted, valiantly; I still marched on to the toilet.
She slips! She falls...In her vomit.
Ouch, my butt hurts. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ewwwwww. Ouch my foot hurts. EWWWWWWWWWWW.
INHALE.
EXHALE.
I get up, remove my clothes, and turn on the shower. I find that the water is turning a slight tinge of red. Whatever, it’s probably nothing.
God dammit my foot hurts! I look down to see my right foot, about the size of a basketball, pouring blood and turning a dark purple fast. I suck in the pain; this is no time to be crying.
After getting dressed, I hobble across the house to my parents’ room. It is my birthday now, 12.30 AM. I inform them of last night’s mishaps and they escort me back to bed. This is when they also examine my toe. Which is perpendicular to my foot. And Red. And I can see my bone.
But my dad thinks it’s not broken and we should all just go back to bed.
In the morning, after breakfast at about noon we make our way to hospital. I am in my night clothes, looking like an escaped prisoner. Broken toe, splitting headache – my parents’ yelling helping my condition, still on my feet and barely able to breathe, I was now 16 years old.