BIRTHDAY

For my birthday we go to Trivandrum's zoo which is well known. First I must confess, that considering how unpleasant I've made Trivandrum sound, that surrounding the zoo is a large beautiful park, green and filled with gazebos and packs of children and young men and women.

The zoo is still closed so we sit down on a bench and are swarmed by one group of people after another, all wanting photographs. "Hello! Hello! Where are you from?" When they sit next to you they hold your hand. After an hour of this we make our escape.

The zoo is a zoo. Though he is very sad, I adore an old vulture sitting in a too-small cage. He is as tall and large as a trash can and has a white mane like a lion. There is a giant squirrel with a golden tail running back and forth back and forth on his wire. We stare at the leopard cage for minutes until slowly, suddenly they appear right before our eyes, in the crook of a branch, on top of a rock.

For dinner we go to a pizza chain. "The perfect place for a birthday bash!" Okay then. I get a cone-izza, which is a pizza wrapped up like an ice-cream cone and filled with cheese and hot Indian spices.