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In the spirit of the ongoing celebratory season, I wanted to write about the intricacies of choosing gifts for loved ones, but maybe an example would explain it better. The gifts men submit to when they have tyrannical offspring are quite extraordinary, especially when those offspring are sweet little girls who can tear through defences of the most hardened among the tribe.

So my rugby player husband packs for an away match, enthralling me with menacing strategy talk of zero tolerance towards the opposition, an aggressive game plan. This, as he packs the following — a protective helmet, kneepads, mouth guard... and a fairy doll. Yep, you read it right. If you ask him, he’d tell you the doll’s full name, my husband who pretends to barely remember what colour I’m wearing every morning.

He will not only proceed to tell you that it’s a clover fairy, but will also describe its green tinsel frock. That’s because the doll is a gift from his precious five-year-old, and she has gifted him the creature from her vast menagerie only for this trip, so he has “something to remember me by” when he’s away. And those very grown up words, uttered by a very little person, are enough to undo him. Enough to ensure that the doll is packed into the rucksack front and centre, so everyone notices the gift.

One of my favourite authors, Christopher Isherwood once wrote of how men are more sentimental than women ever could be. I wonder if he might not have hit upon some inexplicable truth there, especially when it concerns father-daughter bonds.

“All the naughtiest boys on the team have daughters,” one of the Indian Rugby team WAGS (wives and girlfriends of sportsmen) observed. Certainly, at a team-with-family get-together, the naughtiest, most scrappy ones in the squad, the fire starters as it were, had little girls on their arms. And if the little ones turned them into soppy wusses in their down time, they bore the antics of their tiny tyrants like badges of honour. Even made sure, in the manner of alpha men used to getting what they want, that the gifts they gave their babies also amused them.

A wife told me, “When we pack for the pool, we included the water gun, but my husband seems to like it more than my toddler, so she now calls it daddy’s toy!”

A tabulation of my own husband’s gifts to my child after a tour: 1. a soft hammer 2. A rubber slingshot set 3. A stuffed dolphin. The hammer and slingshot were supposed to improve her target practise skills, the dolphin to increase general knowledge, but here’s what I saw when I came home that day: My husband blissfully asleep using the stuffed dolphin as pillow, while the hammer was being used by my daughter on pressure points, to “help daddy’s aching knee,” post-game. Do you really want to know who played with the sling shot more?

Anyway, the reason I got into the whole father-daughter bond in the first place, was because I was trying to highlight the art of gifting. I recall some tabloid item outlining how Football wunderkind David Beckham gifted his three sons Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ on their iPods, testimony to his joy over his much-longed-for daughter. The co-conspirator business, not just in gifting, but in life, somehow appears very strong between daddies and daughters. B-Town’s Abhishek Bachchan had apparently told friends that he wanted a baby girl, possibly channelling this very mood.

And to conclude the gifting bit, Chait’s birthday this year had an unusual gift by his Precious — a personalised ballet performance, because he missed the one at the class concert. The circle of life’s little astonishments was complete when we met one of his friends later, a beefy Rugby player, who said, most affronted, “My baby’s in your baby’s class. We didn’t see you at the ballet performance.” My husband, (who only ever attends sports or business events) looking contrite, to my open-mouthed amazement, answered, “Next time, for sure.”