What was going on when I was born?

A top Republican leader in the House of Representatives said today that if President Reagan carried out his pledge to veto a popular bill to repeal the 1982 law on withholding taxes from dividends and interest, the President could expect to be overridden. ''The votes are there to override in both the House and Senate,'' Representative Dick Cheney, a Republican whip, told reporters at a breakfast meeting. The measure has not yet been put to a test, but Mr. Cheney said it would pass ''overwhelmingly.'' The Wyoming conservative said that President Reagan was privately warned that he faced being overridden during a stormy meeting with Republican Congressional leaders a week ago. Congressional sources said the warning came from Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader, and that no one else had disagreed.

THE art of the confectioner is never in more dazzling evidence than at Easter, a tribute, perhaps, to the inspiration springtime provides. For weeks now, shelves and windows of candy and pastry shops have been blossoming forth with a storybook array of chicks and rabbits, flowers and eggs, trimmed with delicate and edible pastel frostings. In this case, as in so many others, content is at least as important as form, for these beauties must be as good to eat as they are to see. The chocolates, candies, cakes and breads that follow were selected from the myriad selection in the city, not only because they are the loveliest and most imaginative, but also because they are delectable and subtly flavored confections.

The Reagan Administration, as part of an effort to aid in restoring the international competitiveness of American industry, proposes to abolish the triple-damage penalty in most antitrust lawsuits. Instead, private parties would be limited to recovering only the actual amount of the damages they suffer. In addition, according to Capitol Hill and Justice Department officials familiar with a draft plan that has been sent to Congressional committees for study, the Administration seeks to improve the protection - and thus the profits - enjoyed by holders of American patents. The idea of reducing the penalties for many common types of antitrust violations has gained acceptance in recent years, but the proposed changes are thought to be the boldest formally advanced by any Administration.

Spurred by an increase of foreign visitors and the growing sophistication of the local audience, New York is strengthening its traditional role as the country's most demanding and diverse city for food. This is true of both its restaurants and its retail shops. Diversity is the city's specialty, closely followed by professionalism in management. Despite the current recession being felt by many restaurants and fancy food shops, New York is now the world's leading market for high-quality wines and luxury food products. And because it has the country's most demanding audience, many chefs and restaurant owners say they feel challenged to test their mettle here. Others, deterred by the city's fast pace, intense competition, crowded facilities and high costs of labor, real estate and construction, say they are content to make their marks in the less pressured surroundings of other cities in the country. If New York does not rival Paris, Tokyo or such northern Italian cities as Milan, Venice and Florence as a source of trend-setting culinary innovation, it makes up for that by offering a far wider selection of ethnic cuisines of remarkably high quality.

A plan to build a $2.1 billion coal- and garbage-fueled power plant on Staten Island on the shore of the Arthur Kill was ''indefinitely postponed'' yesterday by the Power Authority of the State of New York. The action came after Governor Cuomo informed the authority chairman, John S. Dyson, that he would not sign a contract for the sale of power from the proposed plant. Mr. Cuomo's decision, contained in a letter dated March 25, effectively blocked the authority from selling bonds, its sole means of raising money for large construction projects, according to Mr. Dyson. During his gubernatorial campaign, Governor Cuomo repeatedly opposed the proposed Arthur Kill plant, citing economic and environmental reasons. He promised to block construction of the plant if he was elected. His objections added to an already tempestuous debate over whether the proposed Arthur Kill plant posed a serious health hazard to Staten Island residents.

The dominant impression from 10 days of conversations with officials in the Soviet Union is that they are waiting for developments in three areas: to see whether the United States will have the necessary political support to deploy new missiles in Western Europe; to gauge whether politics will push the Reagan Administration toward compromises, and, above all, to find out how the Soviet Union will ultimately fare under the new leadership of Yuri V. Andropov. Compared with past conversations with many of the same officials and academic experts, even after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in late 1979, there seemed to be outright hostility toward the United States. The feelings of the officials seemed to match the hostility President Reagan expressed in his ''focus of evil'' speech of March 8. There also seemed to be more than the usual reluctance to acknowledge any Soviet faults, less hope about and even less interest in improving relations with the United States, and greater felt but unspoken uncertainty about their own future. These are the impressions gathered in conversations from March 7 to 17 with military, civilian, party and academic officials in Moscow and Kiev, in restaurants, in walks along gray boulevards and in the conference rooms of foreign policy institutes where outsiders are usually received.

A decade ago a blender was the cynosure of ''modern'' American kitchens, a shiny electric obelisk that could do it all - or at least all the tasks of that relatively ingenuous age, namely mixing batters, pureeing soups and frothing drinks. Then along came the flashy foreign food processor, with its French accent, Porsche-like motor and more blades than a lawn-mower factory. As home cooks became enamored of this exotic appliance, blenders were consigned to milkshake duty, or worse, stored away beside dusty fondue pots, waffle irons that hadn't been used since the kids left home and Rube Goldbergesque vegetable choppers purchased years ago from a rapidfire television announcer. But now old-fashioned one-speed blenders, as well as the new ones with up to a dozen or more settings, are finding a role in the emerging postnouvelle cooking on both sides of the Atlantic. This type of cooking is based upon sauces that are light and herbaceous, colorful and intensely flavorful, but without the overrefinement and preciosity of some nouvelle creations. And if simplicity is the new battle cry in certain circles, blenders may be the weapons of the hour.

For three weeks, 160,000 commuters have been waiting for a train. Struck with strikes, the regular riders of Metro-North and N.J. Transit, like any endangered species, have tried to adapt. At first, they could exult in their hardiness. But after days of rising early, arriving late and waiting in the rain, what was novelty has become drudgery. ''I'd just like to win,'' John Spiers of Yonkers put it plaintively at a train station in Bronxville in Westchester County. ''Just one time.'' This is the story of patience lost - a commuters' diary, if you will, of Mr. Spier and the 160,000 like him.

''To look down to an endless future with both of us sitting here with these horrible missiles aimed at each other, and the only thing preventing a holocaust is just so long as no one pulls the trigger, this is unthinkable.'' - President Reagan. (A15:1.)

The Justice Department says it plans to sue for millions of dollars in cleanup costs from some or all of more than 200 companies that dumped toxic wastes at the Stringfellow Acid Pits near Riverside, Calif. Potential defendants include several large companies with ties to current and former Administration figures. Carol E. Dinkins, head of the Justice Department's Division of Land and Natural Resources, said in a telephone interview today that secret negotiations with the dumpers, which began last fall, broke down this month. Deadline Passed 10 Days Ago ''We weren't able to work out a settlement agreement, so we are proceeding to draw up a complaint,'' she said, adding that the deadline for the companies to come to terms passed about 10 days ago. The 22-acre Stringfellow site is one of the nation's most dangerous toxic waste dumps and is classified by California as its first priority for Federal cleanup funds. It has been at the center of charges that the Reagan Administration manipulated cleanup financing to influence last November's election campaigns.

After four years of intensive fare wars, most of the nation's airlines are rallying behind a proposal that would eliminate a good part of deep discounting in many markets and restore a simpler structure that resembles what existed before deregulation of the industry. The new fare structure, combined with the recent upturn in traffic and continuing drop in fuel prices, could enable the industry to begin making money again after two years of heavy losses. Some industry analysts warn, however, that the proposal remains fragile and that it would not take much to upset it. Pan American World Airways, according to sources close to the company, will announce today that it will not go along with the proposal, which could force exceptions to the new plan in some major markets.

International President Reagan was conciliatory on the issue of missile defense while terming critics of his call for research into it ''irresponsible.'' Speaking with six reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Reagan said that if the United States could develop a comprehensive defense against missiles, he could foresee some president offering to share the knowledge with the Soviet Union to spur an elimination of all offensive nuclear missiles. (Page A1, Col. 6.) Soviet leaders await developments in three key areas, according to impressions from 10 days of talks with them in Moscow. Their concerns are to see whether Washington will have the necessary political support to deploy new missiles in Western Europe, to gauge whether politics will push the Reagan Administration toward compromises and, above all, to learn how they will fare under the new leadership of Yuri V. Andropov. (A1:5-6.)