Learning to gift (or not to gift) the eager beavers back home

Earlier, people were happy with token gifts brought back by the foreign-returned. Times have changed. Now even random, twice-removed, people are exacting when it comes to receiving gifts

When I was a kid, there used to be an awful lot of relatives who'd come in from "abroad". Or "foreign" - which led to the coinage of the term "foreign-returned". They'd either be those who'd settled down in the UK or the US (the most common trampling grounds) and visiting "the home country," or were returning home after a vacation to an exotic-sounding place (at least to my ears then) like "Hong Kong" or "Bangkok". There was also my uncle, who was then a shippie, and he'd return to home shores after sailing on 'foreign' waters once every six months or so.
Whenever these bodies would descend, everybody went into a tizzy of expectancy over what gifts they'd be receiving. There are two observations about that state of play. One, those were simpler times, and people used to be very happy - and very grateful - with just a little token; it helped that India was still not an open market: so, any chocolate brand other than Cadbury's - or Amul (they made chocolates back in the day) - would be deemed a FANTASTIC gift. a bar of Camay soap would send the ladies into a swoon. Two, those being gifted belonged in a special hierarchy; ties were stronger then (we, for instance, lived in a joint family so my shippie uncle would come home - literally), so no one thought twice before being generous with handouts.
Times have changed now. People - by that I mean relatives twice-removed, friends of friends, newly-moved-in neighbours - are exacting when it comes to being recipients of gifts: they pass comments like, "Oh, you got me a box of almonds? We get better almonds in Kolkata. psst, did you know almonds from here are being exported to Dubai?" Or, "Isn't gold really cheap in Dubai? [Subtext: maybe you should have gotten me a bangle]," and when I say, no, gold rates are standardised the world over, they say, disbelievingly, "My nephew said gold is one-tenth the price in Dubai."
So, a strange sort of dilemma grips me each time I go back to India; it's now liberalised, you get everything there, so what do you get people back home which is good enough for the judgement calls to not start rolling?
This time, I'm also having to grapple with what I should take back for the house help at home. Usually, I give her money and buy her a sari from Salt Lake (Kolkata) City Centre because (a) I'd believed money (and saris) would be more useful to her, and (b) my luggage allowance is always seriously compromised because I fly domestic from Delhi to Kolkata and I can only carry up to 15 kilos, and paying for excess takes so long I fear I may miss my flight. But this lady, the house help who's always very sweet to me, complained to my father's friend - whose house she also works in - that I never get her anything "from Dubai". "She expects gifts, you know," I was told solemnly. "Something she can show off to her family and say, 'It's from Dubai!!'"
This time, before leaving for India, while ticking off the gifting boxes in my ledger (including the house help's), I had the following thoughts:
Does cost trump thought?
Spending three hours at the spice souk to identify a jar of exotica that costs me less than Dh100 versus a semi-designer wallet that I pick up at a random sale (along with a bunch of stuff, so no special thought was given to this particular purchase) but which costs upwards of Dh500? Which wins? I have a sinking feeling money matters. Mind over matter is just a line.
Does lack of quid pro quo bother you at times?
Has it ever happened that you've been lavishing gifts on some folks, but you've never gotten anything back from them (except a tenuous lunch invitation to their place at the other end of town) - and that, well, rankles? I'm clearly being taken for granted. A friend went so far as to suggest I should do an apple-to-apple analysis, not an apple-to-orange one: so if I gave someone something worth x amount, they better give me something worth close to that x amount. I'm tempted to consider it. Yes, I know, that qualifies me as petty.

Invisible money?
Happens to me all the time. Someone, who I don't know really but who knows someone in my family, "requests" me to get him/her expensive perfume or something else in a bottle. Costs much more in India, they claim, will be cheaper in Dubai. "I'll pay her back obviously - will she accept a cheque? - please ask her to keep the receipt." Never get to see the cash. No cash back.

I can only wonder: When will it stop?
I believe it's like a fidget spinner: once the process of gifting is set off, it's not going to slow down. I'd tried telling myself I'd be getting gifts for "people back home" the first two or three or (maximum) four times. Not after. But nope, didn't work out. Someone told me it's my fault, that I should simply be more thick-skinned, not mealy-mouthed, and announce, "Sorry, folks, couldn't get anything for you this time."
I can't. I'm too scared of bei0ng judged.
sushmita@khaleejtimes.com
Sushmita is Editor, WKND. She has a penchant for analysing human foibles