And the grand day is finally here!  In India.  Crowds outside the gate, small family party inside, very different from my last birthday.

My last birthday, I spent with my sister and we had breakfast in bed and watched movies.  But Shahrukh’s plans also look fun, I guess.

Outside the gates, the fans started gathering the day before.  Shahrukh put out a tweet wishing them safe travels.

It wasn’t just that, according to another tweet put out from the crowd, SRK also distributed some snacks and water to the crowd while they waited.  Along with (obviously) beefing up security.  He’s generous, but not suicidal.

At midnight, fireworks started outside in the crowd, and also the chants of “Shah Rukh” until he finally came out.

And then he went back inside and had his little pleasant family event and then posted a tweet to us all to make us feel included.  All I can say is, I hope Suhana and her friends don’t have to go to school tomorrow because this tweet went out at 3am and that is a LATE card game!  Even for a teenage girls’ sleepover.

It’s good he gets to have this nice lowkey (although very late) night, because on the birthday itself things are going to get BIG.  The major event will be the trailer launch, at the Imax theater in Wadala.  Which is definitely not just a personal event because it is taking place quite a ways away from Shahrukh’s house.  They must have found the one place big enough and with an Imax screen to hold everything they wanted.

Supposedly a recreation of Meerat streets, stalls and games set up, plus the big event of the trailer reveal.  Which is kind of Shahrukh’s standard business now for the trailers.  Make a big event of it, get everyone in a good holiday mood, and they will all come, and then all go out and say nice things about the trailer.  Plus it is kind of a “thank you” to everyone, usually the invites go out to people who worked with him on this or other projects, plus all the media he likes, plus a ton of fans.  A “thank you” and a bribe for more nice things all combined.  Of course, in the internet, there will no doubt be a never ending spiral of nastiness from all the people who aren’t actually there but are feeding off of each other with bad rumors.  Oh, and multiple reports have it that this is the cake that will be served:

(My cake will be better.  I’m thinking Nutella frosting!)

That’s all for “work”, but then for fun he is supposed to be having a big big party at Mannat later.  Everyone is rumored to be invited and expected, Salman and Aamir included.  So, not the little dinner parties they have fairly often, but a real blow out.  Get ready for many photos of people arriving in fabulous outfits and a series of feuds and romances that all develop out of it, in the way these things happen at big parties.  All in all a very fun and busy day!

And you, my little readers, get to serve as my correspondents on the ground.  Because just as all of this is happening, I will be sleeping.  And then working and then frosting a cake and so on and so forth.  So, you go ahead and post updates in the comments of this post as they filter through from Indian press.