With Best Compliments - Really?

Gifting is the one thing that we as humans have made a social habit, and of late it’s become more than just a habit. We tend to gift every possible person, on everyone other occasion and all kinds of things, irrespective of the fact that it makes any sense to the receiver or not.

It’s been quite some time since I have reduced (if not stopped) accepting gifts and  that, I have explicitly stated to those near and dear ones who care to go buy me a gift on some occasion or the other. This might sound a little sadistic but that’s how even I feel after I receive the gift and have to fake to the other person saying “Wow!!!! It’s awesome, exactly what I wanted!!” (Huh, each word was a lie there! more often than not). I got bad reactions from all the people whom I requested not to get me anything on my next birthday; they tried hard to persuade me to accept something, at least something just to make them feel good. But I fail to understand why something I don’t like accepting will make them feel good if I was important to them at the first place. For them it might be a formality or something but for me if I don’t like it or don’t want it, I mean it!

Now there might be a question in your mind, why would someone not like getting something from someone else, specially when it is given by a dear one and especially when it doesn’t cost anything (ha! It does matter ;)). The reason is simple or you can say obvious, over the years I have received tons of gifts from a wide range of people ranging from parents to cousins, friends to colleagues and complete strangers on various occasions. But more often than not I have not liked the gift I have received no matter how expensive or how good someone else must have thought it was. It could simply be because my choice is a little different than the buyer of that gift or because it really is not a good enough thing in someway or the other. It feels like such a burden to me at times that I feel like running away from such occasions or places where people bestow their wishes upon me with a gift that I am sure I might not like. It’s a burden in two ways, first that I have to accept the wonderful thing that the person has got for me and not use it ever as I never liked it, and next it’s a burden also cos now it would be my turn to get that someone something that might not disappoint him/her as it did me, cos I know I am bad at buying stuff according to others likes and I know that my choice is quite different from someone else’s choice to worsen my case.

I say all this without a percent of poignant feeling because it is what I feel, and who won’t feel this way when one receives only one of the few things consistently over the years. Things like coffee mug, photo frame, a set of headphones and the likes, not to mention clothes of size that don’t fit or color that doesn’t suit or books that I have already read or don’t like reading and the list can go on! If you were me, you would feel the same, what if you dint like to express it. At times to make the gift look better, they personalize the stuff to make it look special. One such instance was when a friend gifted a photo frame, with a photo in it that captured the two of us, now for heavens sake, I have a zillion photographs of mine with that friend and a lot of others both solo and in groups, if I wanna go in nostalgia its just a few clicks away, why waste a frame for it? I am not someone who’s gonna put up this frame on my study table or something for my family to pass a comment on it when ever they pass by it, I never put up a photo of them for that matter.

Irrespective of innumerable requests, people still tend to be so obsessed with the idea of gifting that they tend to ignore the importance of the person who is making a kind request for the benefit of both of them. If they are scared that I wont gift them back on their occasion cos I am not taking one, please don’t worry, I still will gift you in case you are interested, else I would be the first person to boycott this useless (if not at all times, at least in routine cases) ritual.

This might sound like a very strange kind of attitude but it’s the result of years of detest built up year over year by being at the wrong end of receiving. And in case you have ever gifted me before and figure one of those things you did gift in the above list, please don’t take it to your heart (instead take it to your head and please stop, at least now). Hope that’s the worst I can get at being rude on a large scale in a public forum about this (non) issue.

Today’s Favorite Line – They said ‘success is relative’, I asked ‘whose?’.

Today’s Favorite Song – Way back into love (Hugh Grant & Haley Bennett)