Present Perfect

[Guest guest]

In our household, I never have a problem remembering my wife's birthday. By

a lucky coincidence, my wife and my son share the same birthday, hence it is

always a double celebration at our home. Thus, one month before their

combined birthday, my son starts making grand plans, making sure that I

never forget the day.

Some relatives snidely remark every year that Kishore being a Gynaec had

carefully engineered the birth to coincide just to save money on separate

birthday celebrations. So now I tell Yash to search for a bride whose

birthday corresponds either to their birthday or mine, so that we can save

even more.

Choosing a present is naturally a delicate task. However, once I had given

the perfect present to my son. My son was in the seventh-eighth standard and

I was running out of ideas. I mean, how many T shirts, CDs and books can you

gift a young boy.

A brain wave struck me and I decided to gift him a present that he would

remember through his years. That gift took me long hard hours, but it was

well worth the effort. I wrote a short story with Yash as the hero. It was

full of magic (long before Harry Potter) and fantastic characters.

Even today, my son fondly remembers my story, which was called 'Gnik'. He

read it out to each and every of his friends, making them envious. It was a

present no money could buy.

Unfortunately, a computer crash wiped out the story from the computer's, but

not from everyone's memory. I did not try to re-write the story. After all,

precious moments are just those...... precious.

Kishore Shah 1974