Monday, February 20, 2012

A Tale of Two Envelopes

We had checked in on the flight well in time, checked our baggage in, gone through the immigration process without a hitch, and now all we had to do was to just cross the ‘security clearance’ hurdle, and we could finally go and sit in the international departure lounge.

We means me, my sister and of course lil Zee. I was exhausted because I had been alternately running after and carrying the almost 2-year old Zee for well over half an hour now, my hair looked disheveled (as always);  on top of that I was carrying a heavy pink+grey coloured baby bag and my hand bag on my other shoulder. My sister constantly complained about having to lug the blue bag which contained all of  lil Zee’s clothes and other accessories,  and of course lil Zee, despite the fact that it had wheels!  Well, she was carrying her own handbag and a leather jacket in the other hand, and I totally empathize with her. It was too hot indoors, despite the chilly January winds outside, so she was lucky that she could afford to take the darned thing off. I couldn’t afford to take off mine, no matter how hot I felt. What if I forget the jacket at the airport lounge, I dreaded. There’s nothing in it that would identify it as mine, nor enable anyone to find and return it to me, presuming an honest person found it.

“Please put your hand baggage on the conveyer belt for screening”, the security official said as he directed us towards the small cabin where ladies are ‘bodily searched’ in such a cursory manner that I doubt they have ever caught anyone through this method. My heart skipped a beat. What if they can see what’s in my handbag? Will I be stopped and questioned? Or worse still, what if they just see it and decide to filch it while I am being searched by the bored looking ladies, who invariably ask, “where are you travelling to” in a manner that clearly says that it wouldn’t matter whether you were going to Timbuktu or Swaziland. They just have to ask a routine question, answers do not count.

The lady inside the small cabin seemed too diligent to me this time, or did I only feel that way because I had something to ‘hide’. It’s inside the left pocket, on the inner side of the jacket, a tiny voice kept repeating in my head and my heart thudded loudly. What if she can hear the tiny voice in my head? I had been carrying Z. on the left shoulder, and she insisted I put him down so she could search properly. She searched me up and down and groped at my jacket pocket. “Is that a mobile phone?” she asked casually, even though she had groped at it long enough. I heaved a sigh of relief and said yes. I couldn’t possibly tell her about the envelope that was also in the same pocket. 

I stepped outside the blue curtained cabin, feeling light headed and sore shouldered (because of carrying Z, not because of the search!) The man sitting next to the screening machine said in loud, gruff voice, “please search this handbag” and my heartbeat stopped for a split second. Had I been found out then? Now I regretted my decision of not even telling my sister about those two envelopes. I wished I had listened to A. and handed over one of the envelopes to her. But I had wanted to be the sole custodian, not trusting anyone else. Now all the news bulletins about Rahat Fateh Ali Khan came back to my mind.

It had all started when my husband told me to bring some cash with me (in USD too). He had told me to keep it in two three different places, and if possible give some of it to my sister. I had listened to him only partially, it was in two different places but both of those things belonged to me.

 I could already imagine the breaking news headlines on the sensation loving news channels. “A lady caught red handed trying to smuggle huge amounts of cash outside the country”.
“We became suspicious because she looked flustered and tense throughout. The screening machine gave it all away”, some security officials would be telling them. “Oh, she just coolly lied to me when I asked if it were a mobile in her pocket”, the lady in the blue curtained cabin would chime in. While fellow passengers would be too eager to tell their part of the story, “We also were very suspicious from the start, especially after she kept running after that poor kid”.

“Oh yes”, another passenger (most likely a lady) would quickly offer, “she probably stole the kid too. He looks too cute to be hers anyway. And he was trying to run away from her all the time, kicking and thrashing all the time”. Another woman would shake her head sadly and say, “These people are very cruel and heartless. They would use anyone, even a little kid to distract the law. But you cannot always get away with these sort of tricks.”

They would probably want to search through my entire luggage now. And imagine what would my sister say? “Thank god I went to the trouble of ironing my clothes and piling them neatly in the suitcase!” She would have said triumphantly. She had spent the good part of morning and half the afternoon ironing and neatly putting them in the suitcase, making sure the nicer and newer ones were on top. “Just in case they want to open it for searching”, she had said. And I had just thrown my stuff in, haphazardly. “They are going to be in a mess anyway, when I would go and open them at home. So why should I go to the trouble”, I had reasoned.  Oh dear!

 “The pink one,” he added. I was confused, but how can that be I wondered to myself. The other envelope is in the black handbag and not in the pink one! Ah, so I escape the shame of being detained, questioned and also of having my “un-neatly’ packed bag searched. I try to remember if I had done any good deeds lately. The pink bag has nothing but knickknacks, Zee’s dirty clothes, the ones which he took off just before leaving the home; then there was a bundle of diapers, baby powder, Vaseline, two bottles of cough syrup; er, a bar of soap wrapped in a purple Lux wrapper. The lady searching the bag gave raised a brow. Look here lady, I wanted to say, I am not cheap enough to carry soap bars around. For one, I don’t even remember putting any soap bars in. Secondly, this isn’t even a Lux bar, it’s a special soap for lil Zee as he gets rashes from standard soap; but was wise enough to keep my mouth shut.

She rummaged some more, ah what’s this, Tibet powder! The lady raised her brow even more; it seemed she thought I was the weirdest person on earth. Look, I tiredly thought in my head again, my aunt insisted on giving it to me; we used to be enveloped in it as babies, and it brings back many childhood memories; my late mother was fond of it; once again I kept my mouth shut.

My sister just couldn’t stop frowning. “why-am-I-travelling-with-this-idiot”, I could see it written all over her face. “What’s this”, one of the ladies rummaging my bag found a jar of body butter. “That’s body butter”, my sister offered helpfully (as if it wasn’t written in bold letters all over the jar). “It’s used to moisturize body”, she explained patiently, as if she were talking to a very slow child. The ladies looked slightly annoyed. “We know what it is”, on e of them said haughtily. Then a long, heated debate sparked over the weight of the body-butter jar. Was it or was it not above 100 ml. In the end, one of the ladies, who was somewhat nicer than others (the-Tibet-powder-and-soap-bar-finder lady) settled the debate by saying it’s less than 100 ml. They stamped our boarding passes and we were allowed to move on to the passenger’s lounge!  And throughout, no one found about the two envelopes or they would have stopped me, just as they had stopped Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.

But when I told all of this, somewhat breathlessly (due to overexcitement) to my husband, he simply brushed it off. “It’s perfectly legal to take out that amount out of country”. Even telling him about how uncomfortable it was to keep wearing the leather jacket, despite the fact that I was boiling wrought no empathy from his stony heart.  And I dared not debate it any further, lest he repeats the historical line, “Gosh, you are so melodramatic, I could write a thousand episodes soap about you”. Well he should, as I am too lazy to write one myself.

Friday, February 17, 2012

On Gift Giving: Do's and Don'ts

Now I know that gift giving is no 'science' and I can hear your collective sighs and empathize with you too, but I believe it's time I write an official guide on gift giving. More for the sake of my own reference, sort of like charting down a rule book for myself. So brace yourselves and face the horror (er, I mean read on if you will please):


  • Try to give  a gift that is practical and useful in the long run (I am guilty of not minding this rule often enough!)
  • BUT at the same time try to concentrate on the spirit in which something is given, rather than focusing (all the time) on what has been given. Stuff isn't important, it's the sentiment that should count. So focus on that and not on the material value of a gift. 
  • Accept a gift with a genuine smile (not a fake one please, they are too easy to spot!) and make sure to thank the person who has given it to you. Even if you don't like it/ don't need it/ have a hundred thousand duplicates of it already. 
  • Remember that a gift is a token of love, and not necessarily a means of providing someone with the stuff that they lack// need. If that were the case, we would only be giving gifts to those who are in dire need. A gift after all is not 'charity'. 
  • Try to give something which you know someone's going to like, but if you cannot figure out or choose, it's fine. Remember, it's the spirit that counts.
  • Go the extra mile and write a thank you note/ email/ SMS. (Sometimes I don't, out of sheer laziness, need to work on this area too!)
  • And of course do give gifts as often as you can:D

  • Upon receiving a gift, please do not say, "iss ki kia zaroorat thi" ("you shouldn't have"). That's just such a big no, no. Again, it's like saying that a gift should only be give if someone's in 'need'. 
  • Even if you don't need something/ you think the gift is ridiculously useless/ ugly/ cheap/ not to your taste; don't decline it or embarrass the 'gift giver' by saying stuff like, "Oh I already have a bunch of these..." blah de blah. Because, if giving a gift is meant to increase love among people, imagine what turning down would accomplish. (BTW, this has happened to me. And I felt so embarrassed, insulted, and of course hurt. It sort of made me wonder if it weren't good enough or was awfully bad. And unfortunately, when it comes to slights, I have an 'elaphantine' memory; I never forget.) I think in case you don't like something, or feel that you don't need something because you already have enough of something, you always have the option of accepting a present graciously and pass it on to someone else. Because there might always be people who might like it, or have uses for it. Point in case, a friend used to give dolls to me  when I was like past my teens already. So I gave them to younger kids, friends or neighbourhood kids. The end result was very satisfactory, the kids were delighted to have the dolls and I am sure it provided them with hours of pleasure, whereas if they were just sitting with me, they would have only collected dust. 
  • BUT make sure that when you 'forward' a gift, you don't accidentally return it to the same person.:-) I have heard so many amusing stories of 'chain-forwards' of a gift, where it keeps getting forwarded until it comes back to the person who originally gave it. As an aside, I wonder if there are some gifts which just continue to be forwarded and are never really used??
  • Also, don't forward something which you really hate, as that's not nice either. The true purpose of forwarding a gift is to give it to someone where it could be useful, and not to get rid of unwanted stuff.
  • Think you have to keep a scorecard, where you have to match a gift by something of equivalent value. It's amusing how some people still keep written record of exactly what was received on a wedding, and then they faithfully return exactly that. 
  • Wait for a certain date or event to give a gift. You don't have to give a present to just fulfill a social obligation, or to mark a certain date (say a birthday, or valentine's day, or mother's/ father's day etc.) Do try to gift spontaneously.
  • Think that you have to break your bank to give a gift. It should be according to your budget, not  based on the recipient's! Everyone doesn't have the same income. Simple rule. At the same time, don't give cheap gifts to someone just because they are poorer. (I need to work on that too!!)
I do believe I have covered most of the points. If you think something's missing in the list, please send a word to me and I would insert that in the list.