"So now that the little dragon has taken a flight, it is time for our b'day boy to make another spin", Anku speaks loudly.

Ram puts his head in his hands while Ash rolls her eyes and says,"No one is on the stage, Anks. Stop with the hosting thing."

Chinu smiles at the craziness going on in front of him and spins the bottle. The bottle spins and to everyone's pleasure, it comes and stops at him only.

"Okay, you get to choose, whose gift you want now", speaks Ram.

"Hmmm..", he pretends to be thinking but his eyes are focused on Ash.

Ash undertands his intention and speaks," Don't even think about me Mr. Enemy. I am one of the organisers, so I'll give my gift at the very end."

Listening to her, Chinu looks at Anku, expecting her to give her gift now.

But on getting the same response from Anku too, he looks at Shameem and asks her to recite her poem. Listening to him, Shameem and Kashisha share a look and then shake their heads.

Seeing that, Chinu gets shocked and asks," Why so?"

"Simply because I haven't written one",she says with a smirk.

Chinu feigns a hurt expression which makes her laugh a little and she adds,"But Kashisha and I have something else for you."

Listening to that, Chinu looks curiously at both of them.

She signals Kashisha, who presses the button of a remote and instantly, all the lights are switched off and a slideshow is displayed on the wall in front of them.

What should I gift?

“Buddy, what are you doing?” Kashisha asked slowly. Her panicked eyes were met with ecstatic ones.

“I'm baking a cake!” Shameem exclaimed and lifted her spatula to emphasize her point, as if her presence in the kitchen and a face hidden in flour wasn't enough.

Kashisha held the door frame to balance herself and whispered,“Why?”

“It’s Chinmay’s birthday today! With all the positive response I got for my ‘How to kill your best friend’ recipe, I thought it'd be perfect to gift him a birthday cake!”

Kashisha looked alarmed as soon as she heard that and raised her hands in surrender, “Buddy, it’s his birthday. We don't want him to die on his birthday, do we?”

“But I really wanted to bake a cake for him”, Shameem's lower lip quivered as she looked at her buddy with those famous puppy eyes.

“Oh you not baking anything for him would be the best gift”, Kashisha muttered inaudibly and dragged Shameem into the living room, “We'll think of something else.”

“Like what?” Shameem countered.

“Maybe you should stick to your writing... Which you do oh-so-amazingly”, Kashisha offered.

“Really?” Shameem scoffed, "That guy can make Romeo go for a run with his Rat and Juliet... What can I write for him?”

There was no answer to that question.
30 minutes passed and they were still thinking.

“Buddy, I'm telling you, let’s just bake the cake”

“Yeah! Bake a cake; a cake that no one would even dare to taste. Right?!” Kashisha began to lose her cool.

“But- but everyone loved the recipe!” Shameem whined like a 5 year old.

“Buddy...” Kashisha sighed and took a deep breath before continuing, “It was about killing your best friend for crying out loud!” she threw her hands in air.

For a moment no one talked, and then they bursted out laughing.

There was no denying that their little brains had trouble thinking of something for the wizard of words.

“How about we write a 10 words tale every hour dedicated to him?” Shameem asked excitedly.

They both looked at each other. No words exchanged but their thoughts were the same- 24 tales?And just like that, that idea was dropped.

An hour later~

“For the nth time buddy, we are NOT baking a cake for him.”

“But-but we aren't coming up with anything! This is the best idea!”

Kashisha gave Shameem an annoyed look which shut her up and the two continued pacing in the living room.

“How about we gift him some recent electronic gadget? He's an engineer after all!” Kashisha grinned liking the idea.

“Buddy, he's an engineer in degree, a writer by heart. We gotta focus on the heart part.” Shameem lectured.

“Right, then how about we gift him a pen and some diaries?”

“I bet he'll run out of them in a week.”

“You know what?” Kashisha squealed excitedly, “I know what to gift him... We could mix both the writer and the engineer part and gift him a gadget that'd type out his thoughts the moment he thinks of writing them. That'd be perfect!”

Shameem turned pale dreading the next question.

“You're an engineer too. You must know all about gadgets and stuff. So tell me, is there any?”

There it was!

“You've dialled a wrong number”, she replied with a poker face to which Kashisha could only facepalm.

“You know...” Shameem began slowly, “My idea of-”

“DON'T EFFING CONTINUE THAT SENTENCE”

Kashisha and Shameem never thought it'd be so difficult to find a perfect gift for their friend. Boy, were they wrong! They wondered if a gift for the one who inspired them to write ever existed. No matter how much they tried, nothing striked them as a perfect gift. It was a difficult phase after all.

“He has a book- Aliens land in India, doesn't he?” Shameem wondered out loud, “Maybe he likes aliens. We should just gift him his personal jaadu.”

“But we don't have much time”, Kashisha pointed out, “Besides, how do we contact those aliens and convince them to send one of their kind to us?”

“Ha! That's easy!” Shameem grinned, “We send some of his Rhyming Rhythms into the outer space and they come searching for the source.”

“Awesome!” Kashisha clasped her hands but her face fell as she realised they didn't know how to do it. Moreover, the idea looked pretty much costly.

Shameem understood that and they both fell silent, mourning the death of yet another idea.

“Hey! I just realised something”, Kashisha's eyes gleamed with hope, “He loves photography... How about we gift him a professional camera?”

“Perfect!” Shameem screamed and they both scrambled to check if they had enough savings to buy it.

But bad luck was by their side that day. They didn't have enough money and the thought of milling in jail discouraged them to steal.

Kashisha sighed dejectedly. Nothing was going accordingly! Finding a gift for a person who won hearts with just a flick of his magic wand was no piece of cake. Pun intended.All the moments where he had made her and her buddy write flashed before Kashisha's eyes. Apart from being a great writer, he was a gentleman as well. When people breathed air, he breathed poems. To know they didn't have the right gift for him upsetted Kashisha to no end. When she glanced at Shameem, expecting her to go through the same turmoil, she noticed her smirking at the floor.

“What's gotten into you?” she enquired.

A wave of panic washed over her as Shameem lifted her face that screamed trouble and replied, “You cannot fight destiny, buddy. He is destined to eat my cake.”

Kashisha contemplated for a few minutes. They ran out of ideas anyway and they were already running out of time. The expiry day of buying a birthday gift was the day before the D-day but they had long crossed it. Some lazy asses they were!

She sent out a silent sincere sorry to Chinmay and uttered the words she thought she would never utter, “Fine, we'll bake a cake for him. But on one condition- Everything should be done under my supervision.”

“Yeah right”, Shameem waved her off, “Look, I've an awesome plan for the cake... How about we make it a Pizza cake? Basically pizza is just a bread, it’s the toppings that matter so we put a variety of veggies, paneer and ketchup on the top that no one would've thought of, but wait-”, Shameem raised her palms, “that’s not it; as you bite, you'll be surprised to taste chocolate cream and some-”

Kashisha's expression turned from shocked to a horrified one as Shameem continued her rant animatedly. She held Shameem’s arms and spoke with a tone of finality, “Condition number two: We make a normal cake by following the instructions of google. No experiments.”

Shameem sighed, “That means we gotta make the batter again since I added chilli to the previous one.”

“YOU WHAT?” Kashisha was seriously beginning to doubt her decision.

“Ah- nothing. I need you to get the flour since I used all that was in the house.”

“Okay. But you aren't doing anything until I get back. Understood?”

“Understood.”

~

As she closed the door of their front porch, Kashisha noticed Chinmay approaching.

“Hey Mr Poet!” she called out.

“Hi Kashisha”, Chinmay greeted with a warm smile.

“A very happy birthday to you!”

“Thank you! Actually I came to invite you for my birthday party.”

“A party?!”

“Yeah, it’s just an excuse to get together after all. You and Shameem must attend it in the evening.”

“Sure, we will”, Kashisha replied, “So how's your day?”

“Awesome! And to be uh-”, he stopped midway and glanced behind her back, “Why is black smoke coming out of that window?”

Kashisha's eyes bulged out of her sockets and she turned with a lightning speed, “I left you for hardly 5 minutes”, she gritted her teeth.

“What's wrong?” Chinmay asked concerned.

“We gotta get into the house ASAP”, she started hyperventilating, “Shameem was cooking a-”

“Say no more”, Chinmay shushed her with his palm and both of them rushed towards the house.

Once inside, Chinmay and Kashisha witnessed a scene that’d be etched in their minds for a long time. Shameem stood there, in all her black soot glory, after successfully stopping the black smoke.

“I do not recognise this species”, Kashisha commented biting her inner cheek.

“What happened here?” Chinmay asked worried and looked around the kitchen, “On second thoughts, don't tell me.”

Shameem pouted dusting herself and sighed, “I knew starts are always difficult. But I didn’t know it'd be this difficult.” she gestured to her surroundings.

“When you and cooking cross paths, chaos is bound to happen”, Chinmay sighed, “But seriously what were you doing? Frying yourself?”

Shameem glanced at Kashisha for a second and then looked at him as she confessed, “I was making your birthday cake.”

“MY WHAT?”

“Birthday cake”, Kashisha nodded sympathising him.

“That's very...” Chinmay gulped and continued after a moment, “nice of you to think of making my birthday cake, but really that isn't necessary.”

Shameem compressed her lips as she heard that, “You don’t want to eat my cake.”

“Oh no! I'd love to. But some other day. And by the looks of it, it'll take you forever to clean the kitchen and then start from scratch.”

“You're right.” Kashisha sighed, “We have to attend the birthday party too. And we don’t have any gift to give you.” she added guiltily.

“Oh, happy birthday Chinmay! Sorry I forgot to wish you then”, Shameem smiled sheepishly.

“It’s okay and thank you”, he replied smiling, “And you don't need to bring a gift. Your presence would be enough.” Chinmay assured, “Alright now that everything is sorted, I'll take my leave. There's a long list of people I gotta invite”, and with that he was gone.

“He could just make a call instead of inviting everyone personally, couldn't he?” Shameem wondered looking in the direction he left.

“Some feelings are beyond definition. So are some people” Kashisha shrugged, “Anyways, we MUST gift him something.”

“But what? We're back to square one.”

“How about we write a short story telling him how much we had raked our brains for his gift? Those who didn't witness the horrors of the night, won't believe it in the day, ya know. So, this is our only way!”

“That's awesome!” Shameem exclaimed and hugged Kashisha who chuckled and hugged her back, “Aaand... It'll also fulfil his wish to see you write something!” Shameem added.

“Yes! Let’s get on with it then”, Kashisha reciprocated the excitement and the duo started to work on their short story, of course after Shameem cleaned herself up.

Indeed ‘What should I gift?’ was a million dollar question.

______________________

A very happy birthday to
1. A wizard
2. A Poetry King
3. An awesome writer
..
19. A great friend
..
45. An alien
..
79. An inspirer
..
135. A motivator
..
And last but not the least
167284. Chinmay.

Many more stories you have to write
For us to read and comment
May you get them published one day
And send us free copies as a present

-The Commentators.

P.S. Did any of the phrases in the story sound familiar?

Oh well, this gift turned out to be a massive combo of words, but then what are commentators for?

                ~lifestory1995 & nevereternity