Diwali Gift Ideas When the Family Is in Another Country

Diwali in a family that is spread across countries is a logistics problem before it is a shopping problem. Somebody is in a different time zone, somebody is working, and the parcel has to clear a border.

So this list is built from what the distance changes rather than from a catalogue. Four things, all of them true when the family is in two or more countries:

• Anything physical has to clear customs, which adds unpredictable time and sometimes a charge the person receiving it has to pay.
• International courier cut-offs land earlier than domestic ones, and earlier than most people check.
• A call that is easy for you may be the middle of a working day for them.
• The relative abroad is often the one who says not to send anything, and means it.

Nine ideas that survive all four. One of them is ours and it is first, for a reason stated plainly below. The other eight are not.

1. A message from everyone who cannot be there

It crosses a border with nothing to declare, which is the whole argument. Everyone who is not going to be in the room records a short message on their phone, and the people who are in the room watch all of them together.

It also solves the time-zone problem the call cannot: nobody has to be awake at the same moment. Each person records whenever their evening happens to be, and the family watches at theirs.

The direction that gets forgotten is the useful one. It is not only the family abroad sending messages home. The house that is full can send one to the son or daughter who is on their own that week, which is a harder gift to buy any other way.

2. A call that is scheduled to their clock, not yours

Free, and more often got wrong than anything else on the list. Work out their time first and pick the slot that suits the person who is furthest away, rather than the one that suits the largest group. Then give it a shape, because a call with eleven people and no plan becomes a queue of people asking whether everyone can hear.

3. Order it from a shop in their city

The single best trick for a cross-border gift: buy locally to them instead of locally to you. A delivery from a shop in their neighbourhood, paid for from here, arrives on a date you can actually rely on, with no customs form and no charge at the door. Food in particular travels badly between countries and perfectly across a city.

4. Money, sent in a way that says what it is for

Frequently the honest answer, and treated as the unromantic one because people send it with no message attached. Name what it is for when you send it, the fare home, the thing they keep not replacing, and it stops being cash and becomes a gift. Check what the transfer costs before you choose the service; the fee and the exchange rate are two separate charges.

5. Towards the flight

If the reason you are buying a long-distance gift is that someone cannot afford to travel, the gift is the travel. Several people putting in a share of a fare is a better present than several people each buying something for the same house.

6. A digital photo frame, loaded before it is posted

Good for a grandparent on one condition, that it arrives already working. An empty frame in another country is a setup job you cannot do from here. Load it, test it, then send it, and keep adding photographs through the year.

7. The year in a photo book

Twelve months of photographs that exist only on phones, printed and bound. Order it from a printer in their country if you can, which turns the slowest item on this list into one of the safest.

8. A recording for the youngest, from the oldest

A grandparent filmed once, telling the children something, keeps for years and needs no posting. Worth doing in whichever language the grandparent is most themselves in, which is often not the one the children are being schooled in.

9. Letters, collected rather than written

One letter is a nice thought. Eleven, gathered quietly from everyone and handed over together, is a different object. It is last because paper has to cross the same border as the parcels, so it needs the earliest start of anything here.

What the distance actually costs

Eight of these nine are things that arrive somewhere. The shortage in a family split across countries is not objects, it is being in the room, and the first idea is the only one on the list that addresses that directly.

If you want to do it this year: list the people who will not be there, ask each of them for sixty seconds, give them a question instead of an instruction, and set your own deadline a few days before the day. Recording takes a minute and happens in their time zone, not yours.