Gifting ideas anyone?

I want a Kaleidoscope!

 I was telling my friend M on Sunday, when I met her over coffee. She and I were discussing probable birthday gifts – for our upcoming birthdays. She wants an ‘unusual’ gift. I don’t know what unusual is supposed to be. Knowing her, I know she devours books, loves handbags, likes cotton garments, handmade artefacts  – any item with colours blue / violet/purple generally attracts her attention etc. Unusual for her would be anything apart from all these. That day, she bought nice jars for tea and coffee – She’s getting married soon and those jars are cute. She would have bought them for her mother probably even if she wasn’t getting married… but crockery etc is not my forte.There cannot be ‘unusual’ crockery…Jewellery, Music CDs etc would be very common place…I’m still thinking…

While I was still at it, I thought about this other friend, whose last day at work was last week, Friday. She wanted a jig-saw puzzle, a world map! Now that IS sort of unusual. We left work somewhat early,to look for it. Of course we didn’t find it, but ended buying some books and lots of stationery. It must be mentioned that I had never been to ‘Staples’ before and did not know that such a wonderland existed. I’m a stationery freak and was too happy to be in company of other 2 stationery freaks – who understood exactly,the joy I felt when I noticed scores of fresh reams of paper of various types, notebooks of amazing quality and covers, pens, clips, u-pins, binders, files, coasters, sketch pens, coloured pens, colours, hand-made gift wrapping papers, hand-made paper bags, various fancy sharpeners, erasers, notepads, calculators etc. My friends and I wished to undergo some time warp so that we could go back to school just to be able to use all these fancy items. The best thing about all this was the discovery that there existed some like-minded souls ready to go down the rabbit hole of stationery wonderland!! Though the store still did not stock Kaleidoscopes.

Everytime, I’ve gone to a stationery shop since last several years, I’ve kept looking for a Kaleidoscope. Probably toy shop is a better place to find it, and frankly speaking, God knows how many times I’ve tried it. The last time I went there was to buy a toy telescope for my nephew this May. I must have bought it in 10 mins flat and spent the rest of the 20 mins requesting shopkeeper to really search for a kaleidoscope if it is available…  it should be somewhere in the back of his store-room etc… No, it wasnt there. As a child I never owned a Kaleidoscope. I wanted it as a kid and wasnt given since it involved mirror glass etc. Growing up, I used to be fascinated by it – one of my cousins had it and whenever I used to visit their place, I’d sit for hours peeping into it… looking at those pretty patterns. I was never adult enough to admit that the childish fantasy within me had never left. I never admitted it even to myself for a long time. A school friend,N, who shares her birthday with me, actually bought a Barbie-Doll house with her first salary – that was her childhood wish, to own a doll house. We called her crazy – what was she going to do with it – what a waste of space in the space starved Mumbai….Though now whenever I am reminded of Kaleidoscope, I end up empathising with her.In a weird manner, time and again I am reminded that concepts of ‘childish’ and ‘mature’ are too relative and perhaps  temporal.

Anyways, so while I need to  look up for an unusual gift for my friend within a month, I expect her to do all the research over next 3 months and buy me a good Kaleidoscope 🙂