Here's what Modi gifted the Camerons

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday showered the British First Family with a number of gifts at Chequers, the country house retreat of the British prime minister.

While Cameron received a couple of bookends, British historian David Omissi's Indian Voices of the Great War and British poet Robert Graves’ work on World War I titled Goodbye to All That.

As for the Sarah Cameron, Modi gifted an Aranmula metal mirror, a unique handicraft from Kerala, and some Pashmina stoles.

The Aranmula mirror, made from an alloy of 'tin and copper', is part of a 500-year-old cultural lineage and its secret metallic composition is known only to a few remaining families hailing from the Vishwa Brahmana community in Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district.

This metallic mirror's metal alchemy got a major recognition with the GI (Geographical Indication) patent tag in 2003, which means that it can only be made in Aranmula by registered members.

Read Manu AB/Rediff.com special feature on these exquisite handmade metallic mirrors that are made in a small town in southern Kerala.

The handcrafted pair of bookends, which Cameron received, are made of wood, marble and silver.

The centerpiece of each of these bookends, the PM's office said, is a silver bell and tidings, which has a verse from the Bhagavad Gita engraved in Sanskrit, along with its English meaning along the inside rim.

Taken from Chapter 13 of the Bhagavad Gita, these verses (15-16) describe the ultimate underlying reality.

Each bell has one verse etched on it.

Verse 15 says: Without all beings, yet within; immovable yet moving; so subtle that it cannot be perceived; so far yet so near It is. 

Verse 16 says: It is indivisible yet appears divided in all beings. Know it to be the creator, the preserver and the destroyer.