5
2008
In the good old days, birthday parties meant treasure hunt games, colorful streamers, chocolate cake and Mama-made goodies at home with some good friends. They were intimate affairs, and used to be a lot of fun. But that was in the India of the eighties. They don't do it that way anymore, and it's a shame.
Birthday parties are now a big business in India, especially in its metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai, where dual income families, with big paychecks, are going all-out for their kids (so they think), spending thousands of dollars on two-year-olds. These misguided efforts to provide children with "the best," and, at the same time, trying to prove the family's monetary worth to the world are, sadly, anything but intimate affairs.
India's middle, upper-middle and upper classes now have more money than they know what to do with, thanks to the booming economy, and they are looking for ways to spend it, especially on their kids. As a result, child-specific businesses have seen a tremendous rise in the past five years, especially when it comes to birthday parties.
Most have a theme, which is primarily decided by the child in question, depending on what he or she likes. The popular ones are Disney's various princesses, Powerpuff Girls, Noddy, Dora The Explorer and the like (most of which are shown on Cartoon Network which children are glued to all day, in the absence of their working parents.) Once decided, everything then matches the theme, from the birthday dress, to the cake, the decorations, the caps, plates, balloons, individually packed and named return gifts, et ell. And the madness does not stop here. To entertain the kids at the party there are tattoo painters, magicians, bouncies, trains, battery-operated cars, craft corners, you name it. Then, there's the food - everything from Thai, Italian, Chinese and Indian is served in style by professional waiters clad in their black and white crisp uniforms. The cost for it all: thousand dollars upwards, sometimes going up to crazy sums like ten thousand dollars, depending on the venue, the number of people invited, the decorations, accessories, food etc. Most spend between $2,000 to $4,000.
So popular are such events that Cartoon Network has joined hands with Pizza Hut to organize birthday parties, called Birthday Bang, at the latter's outlets across India. They host parties with popular themes like Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls where, again, everything from the invitation cards to the return gifts are in sync with the theme.
It's not only big companies that have ventured into this business. Watching this new trend, many entrepreneurs have left well-paying jobs and are now doing brisk business, earning multiple times their previous salaries by providing turnkey services, where they manage everything from the theme to the food.
One reason why such businesses are flourishing is because India is a young nation, with over 65% of its population, some 700 million people, under 35 years of age, which is when most couples decide to start a family. Added to this is the fact that the earning power of India's youth has seen a tremendous rise in recent years. So, you have millions of young Indians making several times the money their parents did, and wanting to spent it on their kids, for whom they have the money, but not the time. Also, that's not the only thing that's changed from the previous save-it-for-a-rainy-day generation, which, even if it had the money, didn't believe in throwing it away or in garish display of it. Now, however, the thinking is that if you have the money, you spend it lavishly and live it up.
This thinking is what leads people to go all out for their kid's parties. Take, for instance, a friend of mine who recently hired a event management company to do an "aqua" theme for her two-year old daughter's birthday. The invitation cards that the organizer sent out comprised of a sequenced glass bowl with water, artificial fish and rockery inside it. Each bowl was wrapped in glittering silver tissue that was tied with ribbons, which matched the sequence on the bowl. Each card, of course, was hand delivered, since, I assume, you could hardly mail something like that. There were over a hundred invitees. The party cost her upwards of $2,500, but she didn't bat an eye. And this is something she is willing to do every year!
Call me old fashioned but I miss the good old days when birthdays meant playing musical chairs or running around in a friend's backyard looking for clues in a treasure hunt game, and eating homemade cheese and mint sandwiches. Sadly, that's now a thing of the past. For my daughter, unfortunately, friend's birthday parties will be synonymous with Disney characters and Cartoon Network.
That's a depressing thought. Maybe because I grew up in an India that was still, largely, free of Western influences, when toys did not mean Fischer Price and dolls did not mean Barbies, I find this change difficult to take. To see six-year-old girls at birthday parties with Barbie accessories, from top-to-toe, saying words like "totally" seems something of an anomaly.
Change they say is good, but I am not sure if this invasion of American style living on a certain section of India's class is really a good thing.