Not such a surprise party

Jun 10, 2010 - Age Corespondent

It’s your birthday. When you enter the room and your guests leap out from every corner, shrieking, “Surprise!” it’s highly unlikely that you really are surprised.
Ask any youngster about birthday plans they’ve lined up for their special day and chances are you’ll get a reply like, “I think I’m going to get a surprise party from my friends or family, because I’m sure something’s cooking!”
Well, with such bashes becoming the order of the day, the real surprise will be when someone doesn’t get a surprise bash. Kanika Jain, a program analyst with an IT company, agrees that surprise parties aren’t really a surprise but an ‘unspoken norm’ these days.
“Two weeks ago, while we were out at dinner, my husband told me about the surprise party that he was planning for me on my birthday and that he’d invited all our friends. He actually went so far as to ask me to help him with some details of the so-called ‘surprise party’ as he had got caught up in an important project and couldn’t call off the party as the invitations had been sent,” she adds.
Even celebrities agree that surprise bashes are losing their charm. Singer Tanvi Shah says, “It’s weird because most of the time you know about it and then you start having expectations from it. But when surprise parties are done truly secretly for a person who likes such things, it’s worth it. I still remember on my 18th birthday, family and friends surprised me. I was so touched because it was a surprise in every sense of the word for me.”

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/17057" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-cb1b8f64cb0aa8d4b10cca0cb67f39c3" value="form-cb1b8f64cb0aa8d4b10cca0cb67f39c3" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88148199" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>