The gifting dilemma

It was a friend’s birthday. After a certain age, buying friends’ birthday gifts demand much pondering and worrying. In the twenties and thirties, an article of clothing, a bottle of whiskey, a gadget, a perfume all of it represent meaning as the recipient is still shaping their personality and tastes.

Then comes the forties and the range of gifts become a little limited. By now the body’s beginning to make statements on its state of being. And tastes and lifestyles have been settled into.

How can you buy a bottle of whiskey for a man diagnosed with a fatty liver? Why bother introducing a new perfume into her life when she will wear only Opium? The boy who once wore t-shirts with crazy slogan now will wear only a particular brand cut in a particular style.

A birthday gift has more to do than swell an existing line of possessions. A birthday gift has to evoke an emotion that the recipient has not much acquaintance with. A birthday gift has to induce joy and not ennui. A birthday gift has to be something that will make the person feel the wonder of life. And it seemed to me that only one thing fitted the bill; books.

The person may not be a bibliophile or even a reader. But each one of us have something that causes a random spurt of joy when we encounter it. From cats to embroidery, from growing roses to guns, from celestial objects to gem stones. And there is always a book that will pander to a whim. Take you through the process of understanding your pet passion better. Of taking it one step further in the degrees of indulging it.

In many ways books also represent a permanence that most other gifts don’t. Books seldom go out of style or outlive their usefulness. In fact, with a book I know that I have not given my friend or family just another thing but a lifetime of pleasure.

Why is it that then when it comes to gifts we shy away from books? Sometimes the obvious needn’t always be bad.

— Anita Nair’s new novel is Lessons in Forgetting.