Rakhi and gift stores in the city did a brisk business as number of girls and women thronged the outlet on eve the ‘Raksha Bandhan’ on Wednesday.
Many few departmental stores opened exclusive counters to sell rakhis. They offered a wide variety of collection ranging from ₹10 to ₹500 a piece. Cartoon rakhis, Ganesh rakhis and those embedded with stones were much in demand.
“Varieties such as Ben-10, ‘Chhota Bheem’ and others with cartoons remain the favourite of children. When it comes for elders, rakhis embossed with images of Gods, stones and etc were the ones that flew out of the shelf fast,” said Kishore Kumar, a fancy store owner from MVP Colony.
Not just women, even men were seen busy buying gifts for their sisters as outlets selling chocolates, perfume bottles and other goodies received heavy footfalls.
“My sister likes chocolates. I bought about 20 varieties of chocolates from a super market and packed it in a gift box,” said Syed Tanveer, a private company employee.
A number of citizens preferred to take the online route to send rakhis, sweet boxes, gifts to their brothers and sisters living in far away places. Youngsters say that sending gifts and rakhis online would be a surprise.
“My sister has sent me a money plant and rakhi. In return, i have sent her cake in jar, which she would receive on the Thursday. The best thing in such online sites is that we have lots of gifts to select right from sweets to designed mugs and we can prefer the time of delivery”, said K Harish, a private employee from Visakhapatnam.
Meanwhile, NGOs such as Paryavarana Margadarsi Vaisakhi and Green Climate prepared rakhis with indigenous seeds to ptomote eco-friendly lifestyle.
“After tying it to your brother’s wrist don’t just throw it away on the next day, plant the seeds which would grow as a plant and see your relationship grow. We feel very happy after seeing the flowers, fruits and lasts forever from the seeds we planted”, said Mr Ratnam.
