Life cycle of Gifts

Great minds have said the following things "Life is a complete circle." ,"Karma is a full circle. You get back what you give". I have a prophesy - "Gifts also follow a full circle- at times you get back what you give. Most of the times, it is the gift which you find least useful"

As you read this, many of you would be able to relate to the same. Some of you might have planned the Gift-Re-Cycle , while some of you would have been mere observers and some of the lucky ones amongst us would have been at the receiving end. Where we get back what we gave!

We had a grand party last year, celebrating my uncle and aunt's 50th marriage Anniversary. The best part of such parties is the gift unwrapping ceremony. We added some masala to this ceremony. The entire family had to guess the name of the 'gifter' and the kind of relation they had with uncle n aunt. And so began the game. It all began nicely. Happy new, never-seen-earlier gifts, useful ones. Then we hit upon a Clock and my aunt was the first to respond. Well..she was not guessing whom the gift was from, but she was the one to decide the fate of the gift. Did I tell you that women are better judges in such matters coz for men(most of them) it hardly matters where the Gifts pile up. Anywayz, coming back to our gift, my aunt had a party coming up and she wasn't too fond of the host. So the 'not-so-expensive' clock was now booked. Next came show piece with 2 blue dolphins. What was so special about this gift? It still had some dust and some cob web. Again my aunt's sixth sense of guessing whom it might be from started working. And the guess list was almost of 5-6names ;). ( Gifts also help you determine who hates you or likes you less). Best of the lot was a BIG -BIG box, which we had saved for the last. We the youngest of the lot were unwrapping, our parents seated behind us had all eyes on the gift, senior citizens seated on the chair had all sorts of advices. More than the gift, they their eyes on the gift wrapper and its uses! So finally the gift came out. One huge glass tray with two juice bar sized glass mugs and a pitcher, again juice bar sized. We, the kids , thought it was a good gift. The boys of the family had other plans. Senior citizens were not sure on what to do with this. But wait a minute... Uncle n aunt were simply looking at each other. Aunt asked us to check if the tray and glasses had R.S etched and we actually found that. (R.S being their initials). Then the mystery behind the gift was revealed. This was a gift which uncle and aunt had got on their 10th Anniversary (40 years back) and was gifted by a family member. Not sure on how to use, this was further passed on to some far off relative in some time. Finally we checked the name on the gift. Surprise surprise! It was from the son of the person to whom it was gifted so many years back! There was silence. In fact it was what we call 'pin drop silence'.
Then one of the senior citizens had an idea. In the next 2 months one more relative of ours had their 50th anniversary party planned and so this gift had its next destination ready. We all just hoped that the next person to receive is not among the ones who have already received it....