The Art Of Gift Giving

It's so hard to find a good, meaningful gift for someone. Something that you know the other person will like. This often holds true even for family and friends.

It's really easy with my brother. He'll always tell me exactly what he wants for his birthday. The year before last, it was a black kurta "like the one Circuit wears." That was pretty simple to find. But then there was an added request for gold chains to go with it, for which I looked around quite a bit, and when I finally found some, he said he didn't really want them any more. Then there was the request for a bright orange kurta last year. I can still recall the way his face lit up when I bought that for him, together with a bright red one. There is still a pending request for a Hobbes soft toy, for which I have looked in every Archies Gallery, every toy store, ebay, amazon, and I don't even remember where else. Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

There was this article I read in The Reader's Digest years ago. It spoke of this woman who maintained a small journal in which she'd jot down hints she received from her family on what they wanted for Christmas. And she'd always keep her ears and eyes open for these hints. A familiar exclamation in their house on Christmas was, "How did you know this was just what I wanted?"

These days, we are so caught up with our own lives, that we tend to settle for gift vouchers, or cash, or no gift at all. Or a meaningless gift with no thought put into it whatsoever. Or, well, no gift at all. Sometimes we do the sensible thing to do - ask the recipient of the gift what they need or want. But well, not everybody likes that.

It's always a great feeling if you buy someone a no-occasion gift and surprise them. Or get them exactly what they wanted for an occasion, without having explicitly asked them. It seems to me that people hardly ever do this sort of thing these days, except perhaps occasionally for their partners. Whatever happened to doing something really special for friends? Or siblings? Parents? Do something nice for a friend today. Send someone flowers for no real reason, except that they mean a lot to you. Meanwhile, allow me to get back to my search for the Hobbes toy. I have only about a week.