So, let me ask you something. When you look at your driver’s license, is that really the day you have your birthday party? For most of my friends in the US, it is! But for me? My story’s a bit different… and way more interesting.
I was born in Nepal, and growing up, we didn’t really use the Gregorian calendar. Instead, we had the Bikram Sambat, which is a super cool lunar calendar that follows the moon. All my school papers and everything said my birthday was on the 31st of Ashwin (our sixth month). Simple enough, right?
Well, then I hit high school, and things got complicated! My school needed to switch my birthday over to the Gregorian calendar. Since there wasn’t a definitive way to convert dates back then, they just did the math themselves. And just like that, I became an October 15th baby! That date went on everything—my passport, my citizenship papers, you name it.
And get this—years later, I decided to look it up for fun and found out they were a little off. My birthday should have actually been October 17th the whole time! Crazy, right?
But here’s the kicker: I don’t celebrate on any of those days!
In my culture, my birthday is tied to something called a Tithi. Basically, instead of a fixed date, my birthday is all about the phase of the moon. The ancient Vedic calendar split the month into two parts based on the moon’s journey, from new to full. So, my birthday is connected to that cosmic schedule instead of a number on a page.
The easiest way to explain it is to think about Easter. You know how it’s always on a Sunday in the spring, but the date itself changes every year? That’s because it’s tied to the moon. My birthday is just like that! It’s my own little floating holiday.
My special day is called Kojagrat Poornima. Poornima just means “full moon,” but this one is a big deal. It’s the last day of Dashain, which is the biggest and happiest festival in Nepal! Seriously, imagine your birthday landing on the best day of a huge national party every single year. That’s my birthday, and it’s awesome.
So yeah, my passport might say I’m a Libra, but I really think of myself as a child of the full moon. It’s just a cool reminder that there’s more than one way to celebrate another trip around the sun!