Handmade gifts for husband

Write six clues on folded chits and hide them where only he'd look: inside his helmet, the shoe rack, the TV remote's battery lid, his gym bag. Make each clue a one-line riddle about your life together, and have the last one lead to the gift or the TV. All you need is paper and tape.

Make a playlist of the songs from your years together: the one from the sangeet, the one from your first long drive, the one he sings badly in the shower. Turn the link into a QR code with any free generator, print it, and stick it inside a card with a little cassette drawn on the front. A colour print and a sheet of card cost about ₹40.

Cut ten coupons from chart paper and staple them together: "one Sunday with zero plans", "you pick dinner, no veto", "I'll call the bank for you", "one full match, no interruptions". Romantic coupons are cute, but a tired husband wants the practical ones more. Add an expiry date, or they'll never get used.

Make "The Sharma Times" (use his surname), dated his birthday, in any free design app, with the headline "Local man finally fixes geyser", his photo, a weather box saying "100% chance of cake" and classifieds written by the kids. Print it in colour at a print shop or through Blinkit (about ₹19 a page plus delivery). The custom ones sold online cost ₹690, and yours will be funnier.

Fill a glass jar with 52 folded chits, one for every Monday of the year ahead. Mix it up: a memory, a joke, a small promise like "chai in bed tomorrow", a tiny printed photo. A jar from a kitchen store and some coloured paper come to about ₹150. The writing takes one evening, and it's the fun part.

On an A3 sheet, draw your city (or cities) and mark the places that matter: where you first met, or the restaurant where both families first sat down, your first flat, the hospital where your child was born. Keep the drawing simple and the labels funny. If you've moved around for work, this one is extra sweet, and it looks great framed later.

Can't draw? You don't need to. Print his favourite photo on A4, tape it to a sunny window with drawing paper on top, trace the outlines lightly, then shade at the table with a 2B and a 6B pencil. Sheets and pencils cost about ₹150, and two sittings are enough.

Make the breakfast of the city he grew up in, not yours: Indori poha with jeeravan and sev, Kolkata luchi with aloo, Mumbai misal pav, Chennai pongal and vada. Do a practice run the Sunday before. Then bring it to him on a tray before his alarm goes off.

Fill a shoebox with the toffees and biscuits of his school years: Melody, Mango Bite, Pulse, Kismi, Gems, Parle-G. Tape a chit to each with a one-line memory or question, like "which one did you steal from your sister?" Any kirana store will have most of them, for about ₹250 in all.

Find a photo of him at four or five, copy the pose, hunt down a similar shirt and photograph your child in it. Print both and frame them side by side. Two prints and two plain frames from a local frame shop come to about ₹350. Keep tissues nearby, just in case.

Fill a basket with things you've made: masala peanuts, chakli or nankhatai, a jar of nimbu pani syrup, and a handwritten "match night" card. If he watches every India game, he'll love it, and since it all gets eaten, nothing gathers dust. Materials come to about ₹400.

Ask his mother, nani and bua to each write one recipe he loves, by hand, and WhatsApp you a photo of the page. Print the pages and paste them into a hardbound notebook, with a line from you under each one. In ten years, this might be the only copy of his nani's handwriting he has.

Collect the year since his last birthday: the promotion email, a marathon bib, a hospital band, ticket stubs, a printed WhatsApp screenshot of his worst joke. A scrapbook, prints, washi tape and a glue stick cost about ₹600. Start two weeks out, because pages need a day to dry.