Manufactured Births

Urmila Sinha cannot remember
when she was born

The authenticity of birth dates came up for question today as Urmila Sinha was asked when she would like to be born. Stumped by the absurdity of the question, she left it to the Club to decide on her date of birth.
The question should appropriately have been worded as ‘when she would like to celebrate her birthday’. For, like Shekhawat, Nahid Khan, Naseer Putani Shah, Bhaswati Bose and many others, Urmila was born in some village home and not in a hospital. As such, she does not hold an ‘official’ birth certificate.
On the records of the Club though, Urmila’s birth date is shown as November 11. This, as we all know, is an assumption, which may or may not be true. But so far as we were concerned, it was important to know whether she would be giving us a birthday treat

Shekhawat (back to camera) narrates the saga of his catastrophic birth

on November 11 (i.e. a day after the Juhu Beach party) or some time later.
If there was anyone present who could empathise with Urmila completely, it was Shekhawat. All his life he has had to explain that in the absence of any hospital near his village, he does not have a birth certificate and the date mentioned in government records is actually a figment of his imagination. In truth, he is much older than his ‘official age’ of 76 years.
Today also, Shekhawat was hard pressed at explaining that when he was born, a terrible drought struck his village. Without elaborating whether he was the cause or that it was no more than a coincidence, he said he has to rely on hearsay as there were no means for confirmation back then. If anything, he has been able to locate his approximate date of birth by that catastrophe.
Shekhawat could well be speaking for all those who have no clue of when they were really born – if not hatched.

Bihari Milwani:
Nobody knows his/ her own birth date. It is only when our parents tell us the date that we accept it and inform the world.