Ever seen a house full of newspapers? Well, ours was one of them. My dad had this newspaper obsession. Not a single article went unnoticed by him. He read and reread every article from the first page to the last, including the sports page. He couldn't tell a wide-ball from a no-ball, but he'd know how much VVS Laxman scored in his last test match against Bangladesh. He is , without exaggeration, a newspaper encyclopaedia.
Anyway, he'd never let us discard newspapers. Governments would have changed, constitution would be amended, a whole new generation of khans and kapoors would have sprung up, but Dad the dearest would still hold on to newspapers of the previous decade. After a month of arguments and another 2 weeks of cutting out his favourite articles, it'd be time to call 'paper uncle' as i fondly refered to the raddiwala.
He'd come, on a Sunday morning, armed with a big brown gunny sac and a broken rusted piece of instrument, which he claimed, was a measuring spring. This was probably the only time, you'd find me active at home. It was understood that every penny earned out of selling these newspapers would go directly into my piggy bank. So i'd hunt every nook and corner of our house in search of old newspapers, books, magazines etc.
Here's the conversation between a 7 year old(me) and the 50 year old paper uncle.
paper uncle: 50ps per kg
me : 60ps per kg.. pleaaaaaase uncle! (now u know why i suck at bargaining)
paper uncle: jaasti paper illa ( not enough paper)
me : ishtondu TIMES, WEEK magazines ide ( so many heavy colour magazines)
paper uncle: illa magu, colour paper thumba kadime rate ( no baby, colour paper gets me the least amount)
GRR.. how he conned me into thinking all those magazines were a complete waste!
Refusing to give up and with a strong desire to fill up my piggy bank,i rummaged a li'l more and finally came out with my social studies, kannada and math text and notebooks. Little did paper uncle know that they werent' the previous years' text books. I was so close to selling them off, when my dad came out for a routine survey. Damn!
And then came that dreaded dialogue.. "Somebody gonna get hurt real bad"!!
As for what happened next, you might have guessed, that i had to take all those books back and promise to never try selling text books again. I made a measly Rs.20 profit. But what the heck, it was enough to buy loads of those round orange candies worth 5ps each. :)
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