The Birthday Gift

(My brother, Robin, writes very well, although he never admits it.
Last December, on his birthday, he sent me a "weird story for one of your bloggy posts". I choose to post it in his own words because it is a magical story of a father and son bonding through a surrealistic universal force.)

Today while lunching with my friends, one of my friends, Sajith, pointed at the wrist watch I had on me and said he had not seen it before.

“Is it new?”

The moment he said it, my mind harkened back to a year ago, when my son, Aaron, had given it to me at a quiet “father and son” birthday dinner.

I promised Sajith I would tell him the tale. And so they all got to know it was my birthday today and I ended up paying for the lunch.

So it happened like this:

On one of my several trips to our Saudi office on Fly Dubai, I was bored as usual. To pass off the remaining flight time, I picked up a duty free book where a pair of watches caught my eye. Apart from its classy look, the pair was amazingly low-priced (AED 100 each) and to top it all was the offer to buy 2 for 150 AED (approx.USD 40). 

Now, now, how could one let go of such a nice opportunity to grab it and please oneself and also the wifey?

I made a mental note to order this with the crew when they passed by. The journey is so short that they were preparing for landing already. So upon landing I made the request to which the reply was “Sorry Sir, we are on land now and therefore cannot execute the sale” as the regulations are strictly “duty free in the air” and the system does not allow it.

On the return journey with the same airline they were out of stock. I thought, "There goes my dream".

Then the next month my son put a box on the table when I invited him for dinner on my birthday. I could not believe my eyes when I opened that box! He said it was my birthday gift and he had one for mom too!!!

There, sitting in the box was that leather strapped black beauty of a watch with a gleaming airplane doing the “seconds” round and “BOEING” inscribed boldly on the face dial.

This is when it started to get interesting – I asked him how on earth did he know I would have wanted to have this watch (so badly). To which he just smiled, as if he knew exactly what was going on in my mind.

Apart from buying Aaron's return flight ticket to Muscat, I had done nothing more. 

He was on a visa hop to Muscat. His episode started thus. Upon landing at Muscat airport with nothing to do except loiter around waiting for the next return flight, he was in a duty free shop doing what teenagers generally like to do: looking at the latest gadgets, and comparing the Muscat prices to local Dubai prices. 

Suddenly he noticed a gentleman put his cellphone down, forget it due to some distraction, and was walking away without it. Aaron promptly picked up the phone and returned to the person who thanked him very much for it.  Later on the return flight it so turned out that the gentleman with the lost phone was the lead flight steward! He took good care of my son during the short flight back and thanked him with this Fly Dubai parting gift. 

And so this little gift landed on the table in front of me at the birthday dinner!