Birthday that Wasn’t

Hari Singh Shekhawat

There was no drought. Nor was there the famine that had ravaged Rajasthan in the summer of 1944. “It was bhayankar akaal that year,” Shekhawat has led us to believe, if only to explain the birth of a baby boy in Bharija village (distt. Sikar) as an act of God. Today, 70 years later, the boy celebrated that moment with a fabulous treat in the China Hut with his wife and the entire Club clapping and cheering for him after the exercises.
Dilip Babani brought a recording of Rajasthani folk songs to which Shekhawat danced like a breeze. Earlier Fehmida Khan ‘decorated’ him with freshly plucked, beautiful white flowers and the cherry on the top came in the form of a red hibiscus from Bihari Milwani.

Royal feast in the China Hut

Srichand Arora, as usual, did the running around behind-the-scenes, organizing the eats from Jagruti while elders like Banoo Khan and Khatoon Baig blessed the birthday boy. And the rest of us shamelessly ate to our heart’s content!
The odd part was that it wasn’t Shekhawat’s birthday after all. By his service records (he was with the Indian Navy) it is tomorrow. As he says, he was ‘officially born’ on April 27, 1944. But even that is not correct. It seems at the recruitment stage, after having passed all the tests he had to undergo a medical examination. As a 16-year-old, he was horrified when the doctor ordered him to strip and join a line of similarly naked boys much older to him. In that vulnerable state and just to prove he was man enough to match the other recruits, he raised his age by four years. There was also the fear of losing the job for being under-age. “So I lied I was 20,” he narrates. “Today, I am actually 74!”
Fact of the matter is Shekhawat really does not know when he was born, or hatched, or sprouted... whatever. And so the myth of the 'bhayankar famine' prevails.

Srichand Arora:
Happy Birthday, dear Shekhawat! And many, many happy returns of the day. SWASTH RAHO - MAST RAHO - HANSTE RAHO. God bless you!
Jagmohan Papneja:
Shekhawat-ji drinks on two occasions -- when it's his birthday and when it's not. It makes no difference if he was born on April 27 or on "Bhayankar Famine day". Enjoy each day like birthday. God bless.