Our father, a primary school headmaster, possessed an unshakeable theory on family planning: children should ideally be born in March. As Pisceans, they seamlessly hit the age requirement for school entry on June 1st without wasting a single year. In our school days, the magic threshold was five years old (now a stricter six). For parents whose children missed the age barrier by a few weeks or months, desperation bred creativity. In the good old days, the parents and the headmaster sat down and mutually agreed to rewrite history, entering a suitable date of birth to secure admission.
This educational forgery resulted in a vast swathe of our generation—including my wife, Marina—ending up with two separate birthdays: the actual day they entered the world, and the official version stamped into government records. Fortunately, all four of us brothers were born true Pisceans in March, completely sparing us from the exhausting burden of living a double life.
Years later, upon taking command of our Regiment, I went full steam into automating our administrative functions. My top priority was digitizing the manual records of the soldiers under my command to ensure their documentation, pay, and promotion eligibility were flawless. Because we were deployed in an active operational area at the time, transferring the data and interviewing each individual soldier to fill in the gaps kept us working late into the night. Beyond the data capture, these midnight interrogations were a Godsend, allowing me to get to know my men profoundly well when I was entirely new to the Regiment.
The very first creative use of this shiny new digital database was to liven up the weekly Regimental Order. I hooked it up to a colour printer and established a strict psychological layout: the dreary, routine stuff like Duty Officer rosters and military punishments were printed in grim, depressing black ink, while the goodies exploded in vibrant colour. The colourful sections included festival greetings, compliments for outstanding achievements, and a highly personalised birthday wish from the Commanding Officer.
However, when I finally ran a comprehensive data analysis on the unit, I stumbled upon a statistical miracle: roughly 20% of the entire regiment was born on exactly January 1st, and another 30% were born on the first day of March, April, or May. It quickly became clear that their hometown school headmasters had pulled off the exact same bureaucratic magic as my father.
Marina and her siblings took this headmaster tradition to an even more elite level—they all share the exact same official birthday: May 25th. The secret behind this genetic phenomenon was their grandfather, who happened to be the primary school headmaster. He evidently took a profound liking to that particular late-May date, ensuring a clean entry just days before the June 1st cutoff. If I ever try to bring the extended family over to Canada for a wedding, the Canadian Immigration visa officers are going to have a complete nervous breakdown analysing how a dozen in-laws from different years were all born on the exact same afternoon.
The absolute mastery of the March birthday theory was passed down to me during my bachelor days. While home on vacation, my father and I hopped onto our family’s trusted Bajaj scooter to attend a relative’s baptism. It was June, the monsoon was in full fury, and the torrential downpour forced us to pull over and seek shelter in a roadside tea shop. As I ordered two cups of hot tea, my father watched the rain, shook his head, and sighed, “That is why I always say you should plan your children to be born in March.“
I immediately looked at him and asked, “Well, how did you manage it four times?”
He didn’t say a word. He just flashed his characteristic, deeply mysterious, sly smile.
The cosmic wheel turned, and in 1997, while I was stationed in Pune attending the Technical Staff Officers Course, we were blessed with our son, Nikhil, on March 16th. True to Syrian Orthodox Christian tradition, the baptism was scheduled two months later. Our son was to take on my father’s name, and my father was flying in to act as the Godfather. During the sacred ceremony, the Godfather carries the child into the church and speaks the holy pledges on their behalf, a duty my father performed with immense pride before the entire congregated family.
Once the ceremony concluded and the guests settled down, my father walked up to me, looked me in the eye, and asked with immense curiosity, “How did you manage it?”
Remembering the roadside tea shop from years ago, I didn’t say a word. I just passed him the exact same sly smile.
After all, our daughter Nidhi was born on March 20th, and I was born on March 13th. The real secret? Both of our children were technically due on my birthday, March 13th, but our gynecologist decided to delay their arrivals just enough to prevent me from ever having to share my birthday cake.
