Gift

It was late in the night when I reached home.

I have had a busy day and was tired. The thought of hitting the home atleast so late left me with a relaxation I might find it difficult to explain.My wife opened the door and when I stepped in, I expected my girl to come running towards me. But that did not happen and I was about to holler to bring her our of her hiding along with her brother. But my wife put her fingers to her lips and said 'Shh' silencing me instantly.

I looked at her with questioning eyes and she said,'both of them are sleeping. Don't disturb them now!'

Though I was a little disappointed, I was happy that they were fast asleep. Only then I looked up at the clock to find that it was half past ten already.'You might have to make do with me!' my wife said with a sarcastic look.I laid my laptop down and went on to clean myself before supper.

When I sat down for my supper it was already 11pm. She had made the table and the plates were ready. She had prepared my favorite chappatis for the night and I was pretty hungry, you bet. As we started pushing in chappatis one after another, she started telling me about what had happened all through the day.

Let me give the long story in a short summary.

Whatever she said was this: "First flat maami in the ground floor is planning to sell their flat! Will we be interested in buying?"

This was essentially the question that she had.

Of course, we will be was my immediate reaction. However, I later queried her, why should she sell the flat now. What has come to her? I know, her husband does not work. It is her son who works. Her first daughter got married long long ago, we do not recollect when it was. The second daughter was expected to get married any time. The eldest of the sons is not employed anywhere. I know he has a congenital problem. He is a dwarf and an aged person at that. He was more a liability to the family than an asset.The only earning member in that family was the second son. I know the company he was working with and I knew he had a good name there. A hard worker at office, but we office bearers of the residents association always had a grudge that there was little or no participation by him in the flat activities.

Anyway that is not the point of discussion today.Now, it looks like the second daughter's marriage has got fixed. In order to conduct the marriage well, the family planned to sell off the flat. I was a little upset. I told my wife, ' Come on, let us not make use of the situation they are in. If they need some help for the marriage, then let us do that rather than buy their property out of their hands now'.

'That's ok! I will tell them that. If they need any help we can do. They may get help from others as well. And they need not sell their flat for the marriage. If they want to sell it off after the marriage or in spite of the help, then we can buy it, I suppose. Is that ok?' She asked.

I said, 'Yes, we can! Try and see if anything could be done to help them at this time of need, first!'

With that, our topic of discussion meandered through a number of other areas of interest for her (not for me, of course!). Starting from such mundane stuff as the repeated late coming of the maid at home to next door boy who hit the ball and broke the window glass of one of the ground floor apartments. The major discussion centered around who should pay compensation for the broken glass! Let them decide it themselves. It is better not to make any comments on such volatile topics, I thought.

So it were to pass for another two to three days. I lost count of how many days later we discussed about Sandhya's marriage. Well, Sandhya is the name of the second daughter of maami. I am sorry, I did not let you in on that earlier.

So, when my wife brought up that subject on Saturday lunch time, I had some time to discuss with her. As usual, I listened to her and nodded to her more out of an after-lunch laxity than out of any confirmation to what she was saying. However, she did continue and got the result that she wanted.'Sandhya is getting married. They have to give her 30 sovereigns of gold at the time of marriage. Shall we do one sovereign gift for Sandhya as her marriage gift? It will be a great help to them and they already have 20 sovereigns of Gold. What do you say?'

My good (good to whom? certainly not to me!) wife was all excitement when she posed this question to me.I simply nodded and said,'as you please'. To tell you the truth, I did not do much of a calculation as to the cost of the commitment really. However, she confirmed it to the maami and so about a week later we were at the jeweler to get a one sovereign coin for Sandhya.

Another week down the line, my wife had identified a good day for presenting the gift to the bride-to-be. It was with a pomp that she invited maami and Sandhya to our home on that day. I was also present and she gave the coin to Sandhya.

Maami promptly said,' Sandhya, fall on their feet and take ashirvad from them. She is like an elder sister'. I really liked that statement and so did my wife, obviously. Sandhya did just that and she got up.Maami was speaking to my wife immediately after that.

She said,'Thanks for the gift'. Sandhya was asking my wife, 'Why akka (sister)? Why are you spending so much money for us? How will I repay this to you?'

Maami said,'They are doing it because they get blessings of God if they give presents and gifts to Brahmins'.