I’m not Indian, but I’ve got a few Indian friends and have attended a few Indian weddings as well. From what I’ve seen, there’s no “traditional” gift - most of the gifts I’ve seen are something which would be useful for the couple or their house, eg a dinner set, clothes, jewelery, maybe even a gadget or appliance. But this really depends on the couple - younger couples these days may explicitly say no to any physical gifts (because they may just end up becoming clutter) and would prefer accepting cash or gift cards instead. So if you’re close to your friend, I’d say ask them upfront what sort of gift they would prefer or if there’s any type of gift they wouldn’t want - and that should help you narrow it down. Beware that they may say not to worry about bringing a gift and just your presence alone would be a gift (I’ve heard this dialog a few times…), but regardless, you shouldn’t back down, and insist that you will gift them something irrespective of what they say, so this should make them back down if they’re being stubborn. :)

As someone else said, a Polish gift might be a good idea - doesn’t have to be a “useful” thing, but something symbolic to remember you would be nice.

Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. I’m in IT (sysadmin) and would prefer to work remote, but tbh I don’t really care at this point. At first I was a bit choosy because of my overconfidence, but now I’m open for anything - even part time, short term etc - across the whole country even. Applied for several dozens of jobs so far, only had one interview call and I blew it - my mind went blank on a simple python question, although I nailed the rest of the interview, I guess they weren’t impressed when I said I knew python (which I did, but… oh well). I do have another interview coming up, but my confidence has taken a big hit. I used to think I knew this shit inside out and companies would be lining up to hire me, but boy was I wrong. It’s come to the point where I’m willing to take a 40% paycut and go back to tier 1 roles… not like I haven’t applied for tier 1 stuff but I friking didn’t even get an interview call, or let alone a rejection mail, so yea, I’m seriously doubting myself at this point.

I’ve been unemployed for 6 months now. Resigned from my old job because I was fed up with how I was getting treated. In hindsight, it was probably a rash decision, but I never expected that getting a new job, with all my skills and experience, would be this difficult. I completely chew thru all my savings, sold half of my stuff, and even ended up borrowing money from my folks to survive. I’m glad my parents were able to help me out, but I feel pretty bad asking them for money when they’ve been retired for years, and it should be me supporting them instead. It really sucks, it feels like I failed my parents and failed at life, especially when I keep hearing stories of how well off my cousins are, how they’re married, own a house, own a car, have kids etc and meanwhile I’m still single, flatting, and don’t have any assets worth mentioning. Sigh.

Not everyone in IT needs to fix tickets or work in a high-stress environment. In one of my previous roles, I was a projects engineer, and I was basically given a bunch of projects to work on (like there was a small python-based project - they needed to automate something; then there was one to get them into a hybrid cloud setup; another project to upgrade something and so on). I didn’t really have any break-fix tickets to work on, although I was occasionally asked if I could help, when there was some spare time or if it was something high-level the ops guys couldn’t fix. Basically a total chill job, I was free to allocate time on my projects as I saw fit, no hard deadlines, no SLAs to meet, and the best part - no users to deal with.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. To get here, I had to do those grunt roles first, those stressful jobs with tickets that needed to be fixed in minutes, dealing with angry users and stuff. But thankfully my career has progressed past that stage now.