Quarantine birthdays get creative

Celebrating in a lockdown doesn't have to be as depressing as it sounds. Get creative and whip up a virtual party

Elizabeth Jacob had a mini picnic for her sister's birthday in the park at her apartment complex.

Birthdays are synonymous with celebrations. So what happens when your birthday comes when gatherings are out of the question? For starters, a whole lot of creativity.

Food

When groceries are hard to come by, how do you make a birthday cake at home? Sameen, a masters student, had everything except chocolate, which she would usually melt to make the icing. “Because chocolate had all but disappeared from the market I had to make icing from scratch,” she says.

Student Angela Jacob didn’t even have flour when she decided to make a cake for her father’s birthday. “The ‘Make a cake in three ingredients’ videos were my saviour,” she says. She ended up making a cake with biscuits, milk and baking powder.

Dennis, an IT professional, says his girlfriend lives in a place without an oven or even a stovetop. So she made him a caramel custard, his favourite dessert, and delivered it to him via Swiggy Genie. Many have turned to food delivery apps. “We receive about five orders a day for cakes,” says Zonu Reddy, co-founder of Spago Foods that runs Magnolia Bakery in Indiranagar.

But if you’re lucky enough to live on the same street as your friends, you could do what Krishangi Sharma’s friend did. “She bought a bag of candy and chips available at the nearest grocery store, left it on my stairs and stood at the end of my staircase holding a sign that said happy birthday,” says the media professional.

Video calls

It’s no surprise that they have become an integral part of birthdays. Zoom, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp and other apps help groups connect.

“It was my 50th birthday on April 9 and I had planned to go on a trip with my closest friends, but we had to take a raincheck on that,” says Thomas Kanjooparamban. Instead, he gathered all his close friends on a Zoom call and cut a cake while they sang for him through the screens.

Club Penguin

The popular virtual world where users have penguin avatars has made a huge comeback this quarantine.

It came to Shikha Das’s rescue when she was planning a birthday surprise for her boyfriend. “We’re both with our families, so video and phone calls come with a lack of privacy, which is why I turned to Club Penguin to plan a ‘day out’,” says the student. Their virtual avatars met on the site, where they had a ‘date’ at the pizza parlour. They ended the day playing mini-games with each other on the site.

Birthday movies

The lockdown also means people can’t buy gifts. Many have turned to video keepsakes as an alternate. Student Rachana Pathrikar says the initial plan for their friend’s birthday was to turn up at his house to surprise him.

“The idea to send him a video compilation came from the fact that he was working on a video for himself,” she says. She collected video wishes from all his friends and compiled them with pictures and videos of their time with him.

Others are going a step further. Student Mariam George made a video in the style of her friend’s favourite show, ‘The Office’.

Mental health professional Arushee Wahi made an animated video depicting her friend’s life and even wrote a song for him. All the planning happened over video calls.

Games

Many have made birthday bingo sheets for their friends’ birthdays. Instead of numbers, each column has a character trait of the birthday boy or girl. Friends put up these sheets on their social media pages after marking the columns. It’s a fun and easy way to celebrate an individual’s quirks.

Here is an idea for the more technologically gifted. Student Ramprakash made an app for his friend’s birthday. The simple mobile app named ‘hbd’ was in the form of a game. The birthday girl was presented with greetings and she had to guess who they were from.

Picnic

“My younger sister is a complete outdoors person so she was naturally upset when she realised her birthday was in the lockdown period,” says high schooler Elizabeth Jacob. So she planned a small picnic party with her mother’s help. “Our apartment complex has a small park, we got all dressed up and went there with a mat and a basket full of snacks. We cut a cake and clicked some pictures,” she says.