Physicists and movie scriptwriters, take heed! I now know how to make a black hole artificially.

Take someone who enjoys Facebook interaction, and hide his/her birthday status. At the stroke of midnight, I… I mean, he/she, would feel a massive empty, lonely, crushing feeling. Something missing.

So it’s technically not an immensely dense mass if it’s nothing. A sucking vacuum pulling in.

At midnight, I felt a strange emptiness – for the past few years, birthdays were just a ritual of replying to birthday wishers on my Facebook wall in the most creative, personal manner possible. The only bummer is when the other person is a Facebook acquaintance that I don’t know what to riff with them about.

My initial idea was to see if somebody would wish me anyway, and see if people would follow and wish, or if people would hesitate since they didn’t know for sure. As it turned out, nobody did! Instead, I got SMSes and private messages, or wishes in person. Nobody took to my Facebook wall, starting a crescendo of wishes.

I was inspired by one such friend who had a birthday wish. I then wished her too, following with this reply:

“That said I am inspired by your omission of birthdate on your profile and am tempted to see what would happen if I omitted mine! Would people pick up on a wall post? Would one person getting the date wrong get me an early birthday flood? Would this mean I would not just be spending all birth day replying to each wisher? And yes, I’ve just hidden my birthday so the scheme I stole from you begins… now.”

Feeling the crushing void, I was tempted to ask that friend why she hid her birthday, but I held back, knowing that if I asked, I might give away that it might be my birthday today. My colleague thankfully withheld temptation to wish on my wall, after wishing me in person, because he knew of my birthday from my office Skype account.

I also went out of my way to wish my friends who were born on the same day, without drawing attention to the fact that we were born on the same day. None of them wished me back. More sadness! I remembered who they were by heart! Such pricks, just like me, who only bothers to wish if I happen to see their birthdays on the birthday bar on Facebook, and only if I have something punny and witty to say!

Thus, I shall not repeat this experiment again. My Facebook profile should say it now, that I was born a certain 19th of December, 1983.