Off the Cuff: Complex art of gift-giving

Every year I torture my wife by giving her gifts she does not want. She is forced to return to the store to exchange the items for something else.

Actually, going back to the store to get things exchanged is a big time thing with us and we invariably find ourselves in the same place where we were just 24 hours ago. It's like living in a Matrix (remember the movie?) world. Many a time I am not sure whether all this is a dream or if I am living in a simulated world.

The Filipina salesperson smiles at me sympathetically as she recognises me from the night before. Meanwhile, my wife stomps around the store. The place is stocked with fragrant, organic soaps and shower gels that make you smell like a strawberry, or some such healthy fruit full of antioxidants. (Why people would want to smell like a fruit is beyond me. These fruity gels must be for those horrid meat-eaters who can't give up eating flesh but still wish to be ‘in' with the healthy, starving crowd of salad eaters).

My wife evidently does not like the fat roller I got for her. It is a wooden roller with a handle which you roll on your arm or thigh to relax your muscles and improve blood circulation, which reduces the fat cells in the body. At least that is what the manufacturers claim.

It was made in the south Indian state of Kerala and I thought my wife would like it since she has an affinity for that state. But she returned it and picked up scented candles which smelled like we were on a beach on some exotic island. Thanks to the candles, all of us ended up with some horrible allergy and had fits of sneezing the next day.

I wonder why it is so, but people who live with each other for years still do not seem to understand the likes and dislikes of each other. Every year when my wife went to Delhi (this happened for some time till I put my foot down) she would get me silk ties which looked like a child painted on them.

Santa factor

I hung them politely in my wardrobe and never wore them. Then one day I saw a respected television anchor wearing one of those silly things and looking very uncomfortable and feeling sorry for himself. Then I realised it was just not me alone who got silly ties as presents.

For some reason, every time Christmas comes around I get into the mood of giving. I take pains trying to find something nice for my wife though she does not believe in Santa, that fat, jolly old gentleman who creeps into homes and eats cookies and leaves behind gifts which the children never wished for.

Incidentally, my children also suffered while they were growing up as they got fed up with the umpteenth Buzz Lightyear toy under their bed every Christmas morning.

The other choice was guns, but my wife thought giving them guns would turn them into criminals.

Well, I can blame all this cross-cultural confusion on my dad, who had studied abroad and made me, the only non-Christian child in the block, believe in Santa. But for years I couldn't understand why anybody would creep into our house in the night to leave me ducks that quacked when you wound them up or a bag of brightly-coloured marbles on which our cook would invariably slip on and drop the aluminium dishes with a huge crash.

Luckily, there were no bullies among my peers or I would have been made the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. But I still think we were looked upon as the neighbourhood eccentrics for years.