This is how my wife keeps busy during the day. She sifts through the gifts people carry when they visit, and sorts them into three categories: the tiny percentage she wishes to actually use because, after all, how many coaster sets, or cut glass bowls, can you accommodate in your home? Sometimes though, if she likes something, it gets put away for the kids. They don’t know it yet but when they get married, or set up their own house (whichever comes first), my wife has plans to offload everything from bedside clocks, pen sets, vases, soup bowls and whisky glasses that feature company logos (making it difficult to gift to anyone else) to hoarded bars of soap, perfumed candles that have long since lost their aroma, old-fashioned bedsheets and tableware to furniture she’s sentimental about but doesn’t have the space for any longer in our home. To ensure the children don’t escape to another city, or country, un-gifted, she’s already tied up a packing firm to move the spoils to any new location they might wish to sneak away to — ensuring they don’t get entirely away.
The two main gifting varieties consist of the “good-but-frankly-not-our-kind” and the “not-so-good, tch-tch”. The first is what forms the hoard that is dipped into whenever wedding presents, or anniversary gifts, or housewarming doo-dahs are required, and seems to consist entirely of strange-looking objects made of dubious quality silver, or porcelain, or lace-edged linen — things that look nice but are of no practical use. The second is what forms the bulk and seems to consist of bottles of mediocre quality wine — like everyone else in Delhi, we too have a cellar-load of wines that have been so long in circulation that they’re vintage cider by now. There’s little danger that anyone actually uncorks these, as they’ll probably be passed on in a rite of passage that is quintessentially Delhi — you can’t turn up empty-handed so you indulge in what’s popularly known but never acknowledged as passing the gifts around.
It’s a universe governed by established rules, but now members of my clan seem determined to upset tradition. Following an old habit from when good liquor was not available and required the services of a bootlegger, I have hoarded my scotch whiskies and single malts, airing them only on special occasions. But now my treacherous son seems happy to betray filial loyalty every time he visits from college in Pune. “Should I take the Johnnie Walker special anniversary bottle and the Jagermeister, or an Ardmore and tequila?” he mumbles, meanwhile stacking away the wine that’s meant for drinking and not gifting into his overnight bag. “That’s not for you,” I protest. “Would you rather have me buy country hooch,” he throws back, “which is all I can afford on the miserly pocket money you give me?” My mumbling allows him enough time to stash away a Bailey’s too. “At least take a Jack Daniel’s,” I plead, but he won’t have it. “Your friends can drink it,” he says dismissively.
If dealing with an unreasonable son were not enough, my father – increasingly forgetful in his old age – has taken to demanding his scotch every time I speak with him, which is almost daily, as a result of which he’s built up a cellar that keeps growing in size, but which he refuses to share with anyone — his children included. At least my mother-in-law, no mean soul when it comes to pinching alcohol, is less demanding — anything that guarantees a high will do. Perhaps it’s time to start her off on the wine that’s meant for gifting, not drinking — away from my wife’s sharp eyes.