THE VALUABLE GIFT

THE VALUABLE GIFT

Author - Unknown

Like most of the ladies, my wife also gets extremely pleased, on buying her an expensive gift. Slowly in her life the cost of the gifts started getting more importance than the occasion or the feeling with which the person gave it. This pained me. No amount of my explaining her that the feeling of love and affection with which the gift is given is more important than the gift itself had any effect on her. The bigger the occasion, her expectation of getting a bigger gift kept on growing. Any sermons on this topic by me were misconstrued by her as my being miser or trying to save the money.

     To drive in my point, on my next wedding anniversary, I presented her a two rupee note with a sweet kiss. This was not received very well by her. In my weaker times, she extracted a promise from me to give her a piece of jewelry in lieu of this two rupee note. This continued, in times to come, I insisting on not giving any importance to the cost of the gift and she valuing its importance related to its cost. She will even inflate her demand anticipating the reduction required to be done at a later bargaining stage. Needless to say that I was the weaker and looser party on all occasions.

   Then later in our life, started the valentine days and friendship days. To me personally any such day had no bigger significance than the rest of the days, since I believed that these days were shrewdly invented by the market strategists to augment their sales.

    On one such occasion, when my wife picked up a costly wristband my jealousy towards these market strategists touched its new height and I became determined not to have her way this time. So, instead, I picked up a cheap plastic friendship band costing just 10 rupees. I cited numerous advantages of this to her from lightness to waterproofing and to its longer lasting properties. Seeing my resolve, though not convinced, this time she gave in. I felt like a winner, for having had my way, achieving value for money and most of all for not giving importance to the cost of the gift. I was right, since for next many years, I saw my wife wearing that band in the same condition as it was bought.

        Then one day, in a state of emergency, I was moved by her to the nearest hospital. I underwent a major high risk emergency operation. Few days later, few more surgeries were performed on me. After remaining in ICU for about 20days, I became more critical and was in semiconscious state. Doctors started losing hope. The infection in my chest kept growing. I was dwindling between the two worlds, unaware of which is the real one. In that state I saw my wife standing before me, not understanding if it was in realty or in dreams. She was holding that plastic friendship band and extracting a promise from me. I heard her saying, ‘you have to live,  see the friendship band you gave me is still there. How can you break your promise?” This shook me, and for next 24 hours or so I kept telling myself that I have to live, I cannot die else she will lose faith in my valuable gift, Thus I survived and living today.

      

FROM MY COLLECTIONS – BRIG NK DHAND

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