A day full of surprises

On my birthday, I believed that none of my friends, aquaintances here know about it. I got calls, emails, chat messages from friends and family in India ofcourse but I went past the day without declaring it to people around me that it was my birthday. I didnt have to.
I spoke to V's parents. For the first time in 7 years, my birthday was significant enough for this. I was surprised by how 'pleasant' the brief talk was. Surprised by being encouraged by them to have a nice time, with their son. (earlier, they wouldnt want their son to be anywhere close to me) *sigh* - sometimes its interesting to be a specator to my own life and see what turns it takes...

So V and I were going to eat at a Persian restaurant - Darwish in Heidelberg. So we tried our best to get out of office at a decent time and get to Heidelberg. As I was leaving office, I get a call from a friend to wish me!!! I never thought he'd remember. I must have mentioned my birthday casually to him many years ago. I was really pleasantly surprised.

As we walk towards the restaurant, I suddenly heard V say "hello" to someone. I looked closer and I see Daniel, Eva, Fariba, Vikas walking towards us with flowers n stuff!!!! woohh!!! That was a BIG SURPRISE!!! Fariba sits across me, knew it was my birthday and did such a great job pretending not to. Amazing...!!!

Then Jeremiah joined too....i had met him during the day as well. Then Jean....i didnt even know she was in Germany. Apparently Toby and Natalie and Matthias couldnt join. So all my friends knew!!! I kept thinking nobody did.

Some great Persian food @ Darwish was followed by a heavenly BlueBerry (my favourite) Panna Cotta at Daniel & Eva's house. Jeremiah had to leave early as he had a morning flight to catch. But the rest of us were up untill 2:30 am over some esoteric topics. We pushed ourselves to get to our respective houses...

It was a great birthday. Full of surprises. It was ages since I celebrated it with such a big group of friends.