Tags
Birth certificate, board exams, Government Office, low birth weight, marksheet, Nepal, premature baby, Preterm birth, School Leaving Certificate, weired facts
If you have read any of my blogs..by now i hope you have realised that i am a bit weird , if that well known fact surpassed you somehow..i am gently reminding you all again… i am really weired 🙂 , and everything connected to me has some form of funny weirdness attached to them. 🙂
so among many weird facts is the fact that i have to celebrate someone else’s birthday as mine each year.
Lets give you the story straight— I was born on a certain saturday of some year, i have a birth certificate that verifies my claim, and of course my mother remembers my birth too well. Who wouldn’t when you give birth to a premature baby girl with low birth weight, who had to be kept in an incubator and syringe fed with milk for about 20 days !!!! …on that matter…all my relatives remind me of how small i was and how suspicious they all were of my survival..but due to the god’s grace i survived .And by god ,am so glad i did…otherwise who would be writing a rant on this topic huh??? 🙂
well, i loose track so easily… so where was i ..? oh ok.. so i grew up with knowing my original birthday ..went to school with the same ..then somehow in a certain year it all changed. It was on 10th standard as i remember, we were filling up a form for our class 10th board exams (The SLC —- as they call them), i remember leaving the birth date vacant as the supervisor told because he wanted us to use what the school officialy had as our birth certificate.I never thought twice, and did as he told us. so after the SLC and all ,when the marksheet and all came i was surprised that my birthdate was wrong , entire month, day and even the year was wrong. Initial few days passed as i notified my mother and uncles.All were amazed .. then i was so busy looking for colleges and all, i forgot all about it.. When i enrolled in the college of my choice, i went back to my school and notified that my birthday was wrong. They told me they can’t rectify the mistake and i have to go to education ministry. They didnot give me any specific idea whom to go to..i tried in vain for a few months..but couldnot rectify it. If you have ever lived in Nepalese education and governmental system you know…it’s nerve wrecking to get things done in a government office and i was a mere 15 year old then…and i knew nobody…i didn’t know how to rectify the mistake.
I grew up in a family where my dad was not much around and mother was too busy earning and keeping up a head over our roof..she was concerned over the mistake on the certificate but not concerned over to go on days over the government office to rectify it. All in all i got nothing done by myself.
My higher secondary school (+2) started…. and ended… and i landed a +2 diploma with the modified birth date. By then ..i tried again… This time they told me i should have rectified the mistake within 2 months of issuance of my class 10th certificate and it was too late. so i gave up… there was nothing much i could do.
I joined a college of my choice, graduated and even worked in a government job with the mistaken birthdate , as is the policy, that you need to have same birthdate in all your documents. so the mistaken birthdate became my original one and my original birthdate was lost somehere within myself.
When i was applying for a passport, i needed to put in the birthdate …and everybody who is anybody told me — you need your birthdates to sync in all the documents …so the mistaken date was in it again…and as years of memorisation has done its share, the mistaken one comes out easily to me… i have to strain for the original one.
so as i have a series of diplomas acquired along as i age… i sometimes wonder if i would be able to correct birthdates in all of them… or should i just leave all the hassle and “Let it be.” It still hurts the nerve ,sometimes when office staffs throw a surprise birthday party in a day when it’s not my birthday. 🙂
so now you know… i celebrate two birthdays each year…. one is ofcourse original… private and all close friends and family know it. The other.. well … let’s just say Don’t throw a surprise birthday party at me… the effects could be … Funny. 🙂
....goodness gracious me... 
Wow! Premature birth? That’s another thing we have in common, besides being socially awkward penguins. So I’m not even sure if it’s alright to say “cheers to that” 😉
As for getting to celebrate two birthdays a year, girl you are so lucky! “Original” birthday = time to get pampered by family and close friends. And on the “official” birthday that was mistaken thrust upon you, look at it as a day to celebrate all the milestones in your life: school/college graduation certificate, getting your first job, getting your passport, diplomas… you get the drift– all under your “official” birth date 🙂 I think you have all the reasons to relax and enjoy the surprise birthday bash your colleagues throw for you 😀
haha… well , “the official one” is 3 years more than my “Real” …. now tell me how should i relax … :))
See, apart from an additional day of celebration, you have also been blessed with 3 years of maturity and wisdom in advance! 😉
What an interesting story. I had something similar happen to me, with my name. Casallina is on my birth certificate but when I started school in Uganda it was translated to the English version of Cathy. And from then on all my documents have Cathy on them. Sometimes I feel like I have two identities…
@twisted fibers – you are an incurable optimist 🙂
@casallina- sure ,it feels like a double identity all the time 🙂
I have a very similar situation. I got older by two years. It was during my SLC exam form application. They said that we have to be 17 years old to give the exam otherwise government will not recognize our results. I tried in vain to argue but they didn’t change it. I got that date as my official date in all the subsequent transcripts, citizenship and passports. Since my family and colleagues knew about my situation, I didn’t have the surprise party situation. Not until I came to US. Now my official date became the real one. Everywhere date of birth is required and I got so used to answering it that I am forgetting my original birth date. The funny thing is I had serious fight with my boyfriend because he did not believe that I was younger. More than that I had to convince his family who had to explain to their relatives which was pretty embarrassing.
Being two years older deprives me of working to my correct age. It bars me from applying to jobs with age limit. I wish I can do something to change it but it seems to be a lengthy court process and I am not even in Nepal. All my identity papers will have to be changed. I wish no child of the current world have to face this stupid problem.
@ Alisha – i totally feel your situation. 🙂
OMG…..i have that exact sae problem with the birt certificate. I had hell of a time trying to change it but couldnt. Ultimately the cdo office handed me a letter stating this guy born in so and so date and so and so date is same…hehe..
hmm..looks like SLC screwed up many people’s birthdate. I am glad you could do something to rectify the mistake … i am still thinking what to do ::::)