Kishore Singh: The real facts of life

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By the time we went over to their home, our friends, who had earlier that day celebrated their silver wedding anniversary, had already hidden their gifts away "" no doubt to be taken out in turn for distribution to friends and relatives over sundry anniversaries, birthdays and festivities. It had been my wife's idea. "Let us go find out what they've got," she had said with an eagerness that did not entirely suit her age. I had demurred till my friend called to say they had heaps of leftovers from lunch, so would we join them for dinner? We did.

To my wife's opening gambit "" "Anything nice?" "" our hosts remained silent, unlikely to share that they had already stowed away Neelima's faux crystal glasses to give away to Padma, whose choice of dhurrie was not to their liking, or perhaps Neena, who'd had the temerity to return the jug that surely they had given her in the first place.

But my wife is not easily deterred. "What did Sarla give you?" she asked of her best friend's gift. That way at least we know now that we won't be at the receiving end of a set of stemmed glasses "" which has been in circulation within our circle of friends since its packaging is too unwieldy to allow stowage in anyone's gifting closet.

Of course, there was something less than voyeuristic in my wife's curiosity: we owed our friends a gift as well, but had deferred it till we saw what the others had given them, thereby decreasing the likelihood of repeating presents. Later, walking home, my wife said to me, "At least we won't have to spend as much as we had decided, everyone else's gifts were so cheap!"

While we're still debating what to give our friends, it was our children who were the more worried. And all on account of our friends' anniversary lunch having been arranged and paid for by their daughters. "Did it include everything?" asked my son forlornly from Pune. "Food, booze, venue, furniture, crockery, cutlery, decorations, invitations, signages "" the works," I pointed out helpfully. "It must," he sighed, "have cost a pretty penny." "A lot of money," I agreed, since I had been party to their costs.

It didn't help that we had, just the previous week, been to still another silver anniversary party, also arranged in that case by the couple's sons. "At a hotel," my wife had marvelled to our son, "with lovely flowers, and live music, and prawns for dinner." "You do realise I'll still be studying when you have your silver anniversary," my son had pointed out, not, I thought, unreasonably. "That's why," said my wife, steel in her voice, "I'm giving you three years notice to start saving your pocket money."

"Will I have to pitch in too?" my daughter asked worriedly. "Uh-huh," concurred my wife. A half-hour later, my daughter shared her accounts project on the rising cost of living with me, and ended it by making a pitch for a raise in her allowance. "It'll also help to subsidise your party," she added meanly.

But my son, it seems, had already found a solution to the problem which he promised to share with me so long as I didn't take his mother into confidence. "See dad," he said, "everyone gets you an anniversary gift, right?" "Well, mostly yes," I agreed cautiously. "Which costs money, right?" Right. "So instead of gifts, if I asked them to give me money, that should finance the party, right?"

I think it's time to treat my son like an adult and tell him people almost never buy gifts, simply circulating what they get, gift-wrapping and all "" and that he'll have to save up money for that party, after all.