Nearly 40 years ago, a “skinny” Santa came into Calvin Vaz’s life, and his Christmas has never been the same. Vaz, then a toddler, distinctly remembers finding the Santa Christmas tree ornament, which had a candy stick for a body, inside one of the decoration boxes that his parents pulled out from their Christmas stash at their Abu Dhabi residence. “It looked so miserable... I doubt that my parents even bought it from somewhere,” guesses the Bandra-based musician and sound engineer. His mother, he says, was so unimpressed by the “tree ornament” that she tried to get rid of it every Christmas. Each time she discarded the Santa, Vaz somehow managed to get hold of it, and hang it somewhere behind the tree, so that it would escape her attention. “I think I was drawn to it for many reasons. It had no partner or counterpart that resembled it. If you looked at the other decorations on the tree, each one looked like the other or matched something else. This one was unique and all by itself,” recalls Vaz. It also reminded Vaz of himself. “As a child, I was thin and extremely introverted. For some reason, I associated myself with this scrawny, little thing that didn’t look anything like Santa Claus.” His wife Melody Laila, a business director, butts in. “For the record, Cal looks very handsome now.” She feels the same about their Santa, which the couple fondly call “Kooky”. 

There’s one more reason why the couple is deeply attached to the vintage piece. Eleven years ago, on January 5, 2009, Vaz, who by then had moved back to India, decided to co-opt Kooky for a one-of-a-kind proposal, which Melody admits swept her off her feet. “The two of us had decided to get married. It was just a matter of proposing to her. Melody, of course, had told me that she was expecting something creative, and that put me under a lot of pressure.”