Saying it with recycled gifts
It was an acquaintance’s 50th birthday. Knowing that he loved books, especially poetry, I gifted him Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. ‘Beautiful, but I’ve already read it. Thanks anyway, my wife would like it,’ he said. I felt snubbed. He was being honest, I reasoned out. Yet, it rankled. It still does, more so because he said it in the presence of a number of guests, many of whom I had met for the first time.
Giving and accepting a gift is an art very few are adept at. We are too casual and seldom measure our words. One must receive a gift wholeheartedly, and even if it’s of no use, he/she must accept it for the sake of the giver who has given it with love, care and concern.
I often pick up old books from roadside sellers in cities I frequently visit. Once I stumbled upon a rare collection of legendary Urdu poet Momin Khan Momin’s Diwan-e-Momin at Daryaganj in Old Delhi. I got that rare book for Rs 5! When I was flipping through its pages, I noticed an inscription in Urdu: Mere pyare Shaadaab ko — Ammijaan. It was a mother’s gift to her bibliophile son. And that gift came to me! I don’t know whether her son sold that book to some raddiwala or someone else threw it away, but its plight certainly hurt me. You get to see so many such books with inscriptions of love, indicating that someone gifted them with thoughtful affection.
Paul Theroux, the estranged writer-friend of Nobel laureate late VS Naipaul, chanced upon a copy of his book with a roadside vendor in London. He had gifted that to Naipaul and the latter tossed it away! This is an insult to a gift. This also shows how little the other person cares for you.
A woman once gave away a gifted sari to her maid just because someone told her that its colour didn’t suit her ‘astrologically’. And she had the gall to tell the giver that she gave away that beautiful sari to her maid!
I too have received recycled gifts. But then, people have very little concern about what others will think. I’ve seen people return used/unused gifts when differences crop up. Why do we treat gifts so frivolously? Do we have no respect for the giver’s sentiments? ‘A gift’s beyond its worth in currency. It’s a concrete manifestation of one’s love,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh. But the way we trivialise that love shows our utter indifference to someone’s affection and emotions. Alas, we live in a world where every act of affection is taken as affectation. In today’s highly materialistic world, a gift often causes a rift and we go adrift.
