Retirement Gifts

Search for a unique gift on retirement in India and the answer that comes back is nearly always the same object: an engraved plaque, a crystal trophy, a photo frame with the years of service across the bottom. It is worth saying plainly that this is the least unique gift at the function, and that it has a second problem. It fixes the present to the job that has just ended, on the one day the person is walking away from it. A retirement gift is better aimed at the years ahead than at the years behind.

Where the gift is for a man, retirement gifts for men covers the horses, elephants and larger cast pieces that suit a farewell function. Where it is for a woman, retirement gifts for women covers the goddesses and the meenakari decor, and the teacher's farewell in particular. The rest of the decision is the same either way.

The shawl, the shriphal and the memento

Most Indian retirement functions hand over the same three things: a shawl, a shriphal and a memento. The first two are convention and nobody chooses them with much thought. The memento is the only part anyone actually decides, and it is the only part still in the house a year later, which is why it deserves the whole of the budget and most of the thought.

It also explains the one thing to leave alone. A clock or a watch is the standard corporate memento, and many traditional households will not accept one as a gift at all, quite apart from it being an odd object to hand someone on the day they stop keeping office hours. Where the office has already settled on a clock, the family gift is the one that should be something else.

What actually makes a gift unique

Uniqueness comes from the fit rather than from the object being unusual, and the fit comes from information. The deity a household already keeps cannot be matched by anyone who does not know it, which is why the same modest piece can be the best gift on the table or the most forgettable one depending only on who chose it. Where you know the household, buy for the shelf they already tend. Where you do not, buy something that belongs in any house and asks nothing of anybody: a pair of trunk up elephants, a meenakari peacock or a meenakari elephant is welcome without your knowing a thing about the family's practice. The Kamdhenu cow with her calf is the safest of all of them and sits with the animal decor rather than here.

The second source of it is scale rather than size. A pocket temple is a shrine that closes, and it is the piece almost nobody thinks to give. It suits the person who is about to start travelling to see grandchildren, take the pilgrimage that has waited thirty years, or move back to a home town. It goes in a bag. A large figure does not.

What to spend

Think per giver rather than per gift, because the same amount buys a different kind of object depending on how many people are behind it.

The mementos start at about 1000, and that is where the small finely finished plated pieces sit: a charan paduka, a small deity, a tortoise. It is a real gift rather than a token, and it is the band a single colleague usually buys in. Below it the one thing that still suits a farewell is a single brass diya, a little over 800, and it lives with the diyas rather than here. At the same money a smaller well finished piece reads better on a gift table than a larger plain one, and on a day when a dozen presents are opened side by side that difference is visible from across the room. Under 3000 and under 5000 are the family band and the department collection band, and they buy presence: something that reads from the third row of an assembly hall rather than something with fine detail nobody can see from there. Up to 10000 you are buying a landmark piece, and the sensible use of that is one substantial deity in solid brass or one large antique finish figure.

The mistake is the same at every band. A collected fund spread across several small things produces a table of objects instead of a gift. One piece, bought with the whole amount.

Brass, plated, and the silver question

Solid brass is poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol, and the mould is broken open once the metal has cooled. Every casting gets its own mould, which is why the detail holds where a reusable sand mould softens it, and it is why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill the shape cleanly. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process, and it is what you are looking at when a brass idol goes soft around the face and the fingers. Brass is also the one material here that can be washed and bathed, so it is the answer if the person performs abhishek. Most of it sits in brass idols rather than in this selection.

A plated piece is a resin core with a layer of copper over it and gold or silver electroplated on top, and on some pieces both. The copper is the layer that matters, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. It is also why these pieces are light, why the detail stays crisp at a small size, and why water is the one thing they do not survive. For a gift handed over at a function that is mostly an advantage. It presents at its best on the day and asks nothing of the person receiving it.

People searching for silver gift items for retirement mean two quite different things. If you want hallmarked sterling silver, or a silver coin bought by weight, a jeweller is the right shop and we are not. What we make is silver plated, which is a finish rather than a metal content, and it buys a far larger and better looking object for the same money. Both are honest answers to a retirement gift. They are simply not the same purchase, and it is worth knowing which one you are making.

Who the gift is from changes it more than who it is for

An office knows the career and not the house. A family knows the house. That single difference decides more than gender does, which is why the same person can be given a decor piece by their colleagues and a family deity by their children on the same afternoon, and both be right.

Colleagues and the department are safer with decor than with a deity unless somebody genuinely knows the household's practice, because a murti arrives with an expectation of daily care attached. Children, a spouse and grandchildren hold the information nobody else has: which deity is on the shelf, whether abhishek is performed, whether there is room for anything more. Students giving to a retiring sir or madam are in the office's position rather than the family's, so the same rule holds, and the school name and the years of service are better left off it.

Return gifts, and ordering in time

Larger functions send guests home with something, and small plated pieces are the convention: a single diya, a small tortoise, a pocket temple where the budget allows. Buy one design in quantity rather than assembling a mixture, since guests compare and a mixture reads as leftovers, and one design is far simpler to hand out. Below about 1000 a head the honest answer is a sweet box, since what we can supply in one design in quantity starts around there. For a department buying together, or for a matched set, send the quantity, budget and date on the bulk order enquiry page, since stock depth varies by design.

Retirement dates are known months ahead, which makes this one of the few occasions nobody has to rush, and it is still the one most often left to the final week. A specific finish is the first thing to become unavailable. In Marathi speaking families the occasion is seva nivrutti, and that is the phrasing the search usually takes; elsewhere it is the farewell function, the retired function, or superannuation. It is the same gift decision under all of those names.

Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. That counts for more here than on most occasions, because a retirement gift is usually handed over in front of a room and unwrapped on the spot.