95/365: Gifts

Feel like writing a post today but have nothing to report about or write on. So, I went back to the motherblog for post-a-day challenge to find a topic to write and found this one:

What is the best gift you’ve ever received?

Now, I don’t remember all the gifts that I received so labelling one as the best ever wouldn’t be fair. So I shall list a few gifts that I remember for (mostly) good reasons.

Let’s start with the best gift I’ve received in the recent years. It was the a subscription to the only magazine I’ve read regularly over the last 5-6 years – The Economist – from Rags. Along with the excellent content, it has also helped me move a lot more of my reading off the LCD screens providing some respite to the dying eyes. Gracias gorda!

The next one’s not really a great gift but something I remember fondly for another reason. On one of my birthdays, somewhere between 7th and the 10th, Mamaji (mom’s brother) gifted me an M16 replica rifle. It didn’t do anything other than make that noise of bullets firing when the trigger was pressed without using any batteries. I remember it fondly because the very next day I put dad’s toolbox to use to disassemble it completely. Of course, Ma was furious when she found out the state of new and, then, expensive gift just the day after ;) . The real reason for that memory is that I later put the gun and its 100 pieces together. It took me almost a week and some help from dad but I did get it together and working, though a strange noise kept reminding me that I’d left one piece lose inside. Still, reassembled a toy gun at age 7-10 – Check. :)

My old, much loved bike :(

I got my first cycle on my 6th birthday. It was a gift from my parents and I rode it all around our corner of town with the neighbourhood gangs. However, the cycle that I rode the most and have best memories of is a passed down road bike – the BSA Mach 1. Mamaji had gifted it to my cousin brother 3 years earlier but he had hardly used it. Bhai, who’s 8 years elder, lives in crowded west Delhi and wasn’t using the bike at all so gave it to me when he learnt that I had outgrown my old bike. That was in 1992/3. It was the bike I grew up in, started going to school, explored my town and cycled to/from Shimla. It was my closest friend and confidant. Of all the gifts I do remember, this is the one I treasure the most.

(I’m gonna get beaten up for this next one)
Valentine’s day, about 7-8 years back. Dee & I had been going around for about 8-9 months. She decided to ‘surprise’ me by coming to my flat about 3 hours earlier than I when I was supposed to pick me up. She started the day by gifting me the sexiest kiss I could’ve imagined then. Later we headed out for a day of biking, getting drunk and partying. One of the last times I ‘celebrated’ V-day. Didn’t bother about the day since then.

This last one is the one we’ve had most laughs about. My birthday comes close to a national holiday in India. This meant that my holiday was a joint family event with all the aunts, uncles and cousins at home to wish me. While everyone else’s gifts changed as I grew up, from toy trains to diaries & Lego sets to plain cash, the gift from one aunt & uncle never changed – always a pen set. I don’t know why it was a pen set – lack of imagination, an academic focus or lack of time to go find a new gift.

The funny part was that Ma never let me use any of those pens. She insisted they were too expensive and I’d waste them. So she would store them away promising to give them to me when I was old enough. Unfortunately, by the time she did release them from safe storage I’d outgrown them so I asked her to give / gift them forward. We have a laugh about those pen sets almost every time I visit home :)

There.. another attempt over 2 glasses of orange juice and an episode of Mad Men.

Cheers!