Birthday Shirtlessness

Gentle readers, you may have been asking yourselves "Where is the President of IMS, and why hasn't she been posting anything lately?"  My answer to you is that for the last week of my stay in Philadelphia, I was without internet service in my housing.  But I left Philadelphia last Monday to do a short gig in San Francisco, and the odyssey that I embarked upon was so epic that it is only now that I am in any condition to post.  Sometimes sheer exhaustion does stand in the way of the cause, and for this I deeply apologize.  Even the President of IMS can get worn down once in a while.

So last Monday was my birthday.  Since I spent my previous birthday sipping prosecco in a palazzo in Italy, I knew not to expect too much from this one.  But since I was traveling to a spa in Sonoma for a quick gig, I thought this birthday could hold its own delights.  Little did I know that I would spend almost the entirety of it in airports and airplanes across the country.  I won't go into the entire sad tale of what happened to me - suffice it to say that thanks to US Airways, it took me 22 hours to reach my destination.  During that time, my carry on bag with my phone charger was checked against my will, an airline stewardess promised to buy me a drink which never materialized, I listened to a baby cry for 2 hours, and I wound up on a different airline than my baggage which meant that when I finally landed at 1:16am, I had to go to a different terminal to retrieve my luggage.  On the positive side, I did get to eat a Rick Bayless torta in O'Hare which was very tasty.  The best thing that happened, however, was that one of my amazing friends, seeing my plight as I chronicled it on Facebook, put out a call for people to post shirtless birthday greetings on my wall to cheer me up.  And cheer me up they did!

While there were many excellent photos of Hugh Jackman, Orlando Bloom, and others along with great selfies and vacation pics posted to my wall, all of which I enjoyed quite thoroughly, the above photo takes the cake.  One of my writer friends happened to have a play performing that night, and he very considerately asked some of the actors in his show (two of whom I know personally and one whom I have never met but apparently was nice enough to play along) to pose for this picture.  I love it for so many reasons.  Everyone has such hilarious expressions, they've caught the sexiest moment of shirtlessness which is indeed the moment just before the shirt comes off, and the direct eye contact with the camera seems to be saying "Happy Birthday, Nandita" each in his own specific way.  I thank each of these men for contributing to the cause and to my birthday in such a profound and personal way.  I am forever changed.

So for those of you naysayers who think that male shirtlessness is a ridiculous cause, let me just say that it made all the difference to one forlorn little Indian girl traveling across the country at the pace of 1975 Dodge Dart.  In fact, at one point, the shirtless pictures were all that kept me from throwing myself off of the immobile plane.  As I believe in the strength of the cause, I continue to be...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS