Vaz remembers placing the solitaire ring on top of the Santa, which he fondly calls Kooky, and asking Melody to find it on the tree. She remembers doing a double take, before realising that the ring was on Kooky

After a lot of deliberation, Vaz decided to propose to her during the Christmas season, placing the solitaire ring that he had bought for her, on top of his Kooky Santa, hanging on the tree. He remembers Melody visiting his home that afternoon, and not noticing the Kooky or his ring. The couple later went to watch Avatar, and Vaz remembers nearly contemplating, ditching the original plan, and popping the big question inside the theatre. That plan failed, too. When the couple returned home after the movie, Vaz, who by then was getting restless, placed the ring on the Kooky Santa again. “I then asked her to find the thinnest Santa on my tree,” he says. Melody not only managed to spot it immediately, but even got it out for him, and placed it on his hand. “If you have to remove the Kooky Santa from the tree, you have to first get the ring off. All through this time she didn’t notice the ring. I was so confused... I wondered if she was pulling my leg.” In Melody’s defence, she was just too tired, after watching such a long film. She did notice the ring eventually, and the rest of course, is history. The couple married a year later.

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Melody recently touched up their Kooky Santa, to make it look more warm and pleasing. “It’s not your stereotypical Santa at all. In fact, people wonder why we even love it so much. Earlier, it had a pair of stick-on ‘googly eyes’. One of them fell off long ago.” After Kooky lost his only remaining eye, Melody coloured the face with a black pen. It now wears a smile and has a pair of delicate eyes. 

The undated ornament is not just the oldest tree decoration at the couple’s Bandra residence today, it also finds a pride of place on their tree every Christmas—somewhere near the star tree topper, so that it doesn’t go unseen. “People generally flaunt their best-looking ornament on top of the tree. This is ours, even if it seems like an unlikely contender.”