“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” — God­fa­ther. The above state­ment holds good def­i­nitely for a gift.

What do we buy for gift ?

This is a com­mon ques­tion that comes to the mind after we col­lect the money for a reception/birthday/any occas­sion. Rarely peo­ple come up with proper ideas instead of using the col­lected money for one more round of party. I hate the idea of giv­ing cash as a gift. I too had this obta­cle and later changed my view on the same. [ இங்க‌ வைக்க‌றோம் ஃப்ளாஷ்பேக்கை ! ]

I have a school time friend — Mad­han [ கார்ட்டூன் போட‌ற‌ ம‌த‌ன் இல்லீங்க‌ ! இவ‌ன் வேற‌ ]. He used to be my guide in dif­fer­ent stages of my life. I used to spend most of my time, after my 1st shifts with him. Woodland’s drive-in hotel & the bus stops around that place were our ususal hang-out places to speak every­thing under the sky for long hours. One of those days hap­pened to be his birth­day and I asked this ques­tion innocently.

“Shall I buy you a por­trait or a glass cube which says some­thing about friendship ?”

He was look­ing for a job then and was not set­tled [ I still don’t under­stand the con­cept of set­tling in life, which may never hap­pen !]. He made a sar­cas­tic look and told me what should he do with them ? He added the con­cept of gift­ing some­thing use­ful to some­one. He said the gift has to be a use­able one some­thing like a pack of Park avenue soaps, shoes, 2 packs of tooth paste, 5 pairs of socks, a good per­fume, belt, purse or any­thing that he can use. It was an enlight­en­ing moment for me. Till then, clocks, wall hang­ings, friend­ship cube/globes made of glass were my pref­er­ences. My so called idea was bro­ken. I bought him soaps pack for that birth­day. Once I pre­sented 555 cigar packs :)

From that moment, I started explor­ing dif­fer­ent gift ideas rang­ing any­thing between 10 Rs to any­thing. In a novel, a con­trac­tor gifts a half sack of fresh veg­eta­bles to a mid­dle class clerk. Though he refuses them, his wife starts using them. In another,a low earn­ing guy buys dif­fer­ent gifts daily for his lover — all of them don’t cost more than 20 Rs. It’s the idea of giv­ing rather than giv­ing what. In another dis­cus­sion, Krishna listed other good gift ideas. So here are some that any­one can use. This has range of gifts for any occas­sion and of course even gift­ing for no rea­sons. Let us exclude the high range of gift­ing flat key, car key, gold, sil­ver etc.,

Hair bands [அட‌ அல்ப்பை ! ]
Ban­gles
Nail pol­ish
Cell phone pouch
Ker­chiefs — a dozen
Travel bags / back­pack bag / any travel acces­sories
Mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tion for a year / 6 months [ Magic pot / Busi­ness world / kumu­dam as applic­a­ble ]
Sun glasses
Shirt / Saree
Purses
Hand bag
Big sized mir­ror
Petrol voucher [ Can some­one say NO for this :) ]
Footwear
set of cur­tains / 4 door mats :)
shoe rack
Lock
Torch
Emer­gency light
Bed sheet
Watch / Watches
Pass­port holder
Blue­tooth
Pedestal fan
Per­fume
Head­phone
Umbrella
Pack of choco­lates
Dry fruits
200 erasers [ my son looses one daily.. could ve avoided by 1 rubber ;) ]

You can still think out of the box and gift a car/bike cover, rain coat [ kids], basic tele­phone, FM radio. My friend was in a hurry to send a let­ter to his girl friend. On his way, he plucked few lit­tle flow­ers from the office gar­den and put them in the cover.

In a cin­ema shield func­tion [ almost 15 years back ], Rajini sug­gested giv­ing half ground plots far away from the city as momento instead of use­less shields that sleep in show­case. Also, check what the soft­ware giants gifted [ looong back ! ] shares to the employ­ees. It’s unavoid­able to think about the gift what our fathers got for their life time ser­vice, when they retired !

Gift is not about giv­ing some­thing.. It’s all about giving ! [குழ‌ப்ப‌மா இருக்கா.. என‌க்கும் தான் :) ]

–Toto.

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