give that woman a tiger

Periodically, my friendly Uncle Foo starts feeling stir-crazy and hemmed in by his job as a photographer. He then takes off to clamber over mountains, visit his numerous bastard children in remote villages, get molested by holy men, hurtle down 5m-tall cliffs -- and shoot some more photographs.

He returned from Nepal recently, and sidled up to my desk. From within a grimy pouch, he produced this adorable wooden tiger with movable parts and presented it to me. "Eh...for you," he said in his usual goofy fashion.

So there I was, happily playing with it and entertaining romanticised notions that a grizzled old man sitting on the hillside under a cerulean sky [haha, private joke] carved this out of a piece of wood he found. This old man then painstakingly painted it, and gifted it to Uncle Foo as a token of friendship between strangers.

Then I happened to turn the tiger upside down, and saw this: "Pilgrims Book House Kathmandu 00008".

It was a price tag.