Birthday Galore

For the first time in my life my birthday coincides with somebody else I know! D, who works in the office, also has the auspicious birth date of 29th November. We had planned for a while to have a joint party, along with S whose birthday falls next week but whose last day in the office was Friday. The party was originally for Sunday but S and I had already planned to go away for the weekend.


At exactly 5pm on Friday I practically ran out of the office to start cooking. I made a lovely pumpkin and coconut stew (a Nigel Slater recipe) and a chocolate fridge cake thing which was delicious if I may say so. Philip came in to see me to give me a birthday gift – a mosaic of my name. I love it – I’ll put a photo up soon. It was a lovely surprise.


I got back to cooking and was joined in the kitchen by various other chefs: D made his chicken curry again, another D had made potato pickle previously but also cooked up spinach and kidney bean dishes, K brought couscous - I may be forgetting something else. And B turned up with an amazing cake (see above) after pleading a lack of culinary knowledge. It was a great night. After the food we went up on to the roof to cut the cake. All three of us took the knife (although you can’t see S in this photo) to cut it! I received some gorgeous earrings from F and J, and a notebook which everyone from work had signed which was really sweet. Later on we all went out to Thamel where (thanks to a friend of K’s) we got free entry to a DJ set with a DJ from Bombay which was pretty cool. I loved the dancing and obviously it was a useful precursor to the satsang.


My actual birthday was slightly more low-key but I had some gifts to open. Mum and Dad sent me a beautiful pair of earrings, and I also got another pair (along with some much needed beauty essentials) from Emma – thank you so much. By the by, should anyone still want to make a small contribution to my birthday fund for EBT please just follow the link ☺