Focus on the present

This festive season gift everyone experiences rather than things

 

Is your dining table beginning to get crowded with enormous dabbas of mithai and dry fruit? Do you now have a glut of scented candles and diyas littering your sideboard? And are you starting to get inundated with every kind of baked good imaginable? If the answer to any (or all) of these questions is yes, then welcome to the pre-Diwali period, when everyone is so busy sending out celebratory hampers that it becomes difficult not to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

 

Finding myself in something of the same situation, I decided (entirely in the public interest, you understand) to draw up a list of all the things that could work as Diwali gifts – and not leave the receiver completely unimpressed. So, here’s just some pointers; feel free to add anything you feel I may have missed out on.

 

·       Books are always the perfect present, though they can get a little tricky if you are not sure of the other person’s tastes (or indeed if they already have a particular book). So, the next best thing is to offer a gift card for your favourite book store or even an Amazon gift card so that the receiver can choose something that works for him or her. 

·       Another thing that you can’t really go wrong with is skincare. Choose a brand that suits your packet and put together a basket of sweet-smelling shower gel, face cream, moisturizer, or whatever takes your fancy. Stick a few flowers on the basket and you have a gift that is both pretty and pretty useful.

·       I love receiving little pot plants on Diwali so I am going to go out on a limb here and say that they qualify as desirable presents. Just one caveat though: please don’t give away fancy bonsai arrangements or terrariums that come with a dozen complicated instructions for maintenance. Just send out plants that are near-impossible to kill and everyone will be happy.

·       Gifting experiences rather than things works as well – especially with close friends and family, whose preferences you are familiar with. It could be a gift coupon for a spa treatment, a haircut or a massage. As long as it feels like a special experience, it is always welcome. 

·       Sometimes it works to be a little utilitarian as well. If you know that your friend has an expensive Nespresso habit, then gifting her a six-month – or yearly, if you’re feeling generous – supply of coffee capsules will earn you plenty of brownie points (and a nice cup of coffee too, for good measure).

·       But if you are the traditional kind and insist on a good old-fashioned Diwali hamper, then here’s a pointer of some things that work well: a nice bottle of extra-virgin olive oil; a bottle of good red wine or whiskey; a small box of kaju katli; a colourful toran for its symbolic value; and a beautifully-designed diya that can do duty even after the festival of lights has come and gone. 

 

Smell the roses

 The lessons that gardening teaches you 

The first time I became invested in plants was when I moved into my first home in Delhi. It was a tiny barsati in Defence Colony but it had a huge terrace which was crying out to be filled with beautiful blooms. So, during my first Delhi winter, I planted every colourful annual I could find in the local nursery and waited for them to bloom in spring. And bloom they certainly did, turning my terrace into a riot of colour that gave me much joy as I sat there every morning sipping my first cup of coffee. 

 

Since then, no matter where I moved, and however small my balcony or patch of green, I became obsessed with plants: potting them in colourful containers, making sure they had enough sun/shade, feeding them with fertilizer, and rotating them with the seasons. I have never ever had a garden of my own, but even small-scale gardening of the kind I do in my current Delhi apartment has taught me some important life lessons. 

 

First off, it has taught me patience. You can plant a seed and water it religiously, but it will only grow in its own time, it will bloom when it is ready, and it will wilt when its time is up. You can do your best by your plants, but you must work on their time scale not on yours. Nurture is all very well, but Nature is the master – and don’t you ever forget it.

 

Having a garden – or some plants on a balcony – makes you realize that beauty is transient. Nothing lasts forever. Flowers will bloom for a while and then die. Leaves will fall off your frangipani every year, leaving you bereft. But then, new leaves will sprout and your tree will grow fractionally taller and wider, and begin to bloom once again. There is nothing quite like plants to teach you about the cycle of life and how everything that lives in the present moment will perish sooner or later. But something as – or more – beautiful will take its place. And your mourning will soon give way to joy.

 

Plants also teach you about seasonality, a concept that we have forgotten in a world in which every vegetable and fruit is available around the year. But plant some strawberries in your pots and you can be sure that they will only give fruit during October-November or April-May. My shiuli bush (called Parijat in the north) always blooms around the time of Durga Puja, reminding me of my Calcutta days when its arrival heralded the return of the Devi to her ancestral home. 

 

They say that the ultimate unselfish act is to plant a tree under whose shade you can never hope to sit. Unfortunately, that privilege has never been granted to me, but I have nothing but admiration for those people of my age and older who plant little saplings in their garden, knowing that they will only bear fruits when their grandchildren are grown and they are gone forever from this world.

That is, in my mind, the best kind of legacy to leave behind: a plant that will survive for generations, a living reminder that you once existed and had love in your heart, not just for your family but for all of creation.