Me and Glasses at my Grandpa's place.

My dad always say that I used to shred a lot of papers wih a pair of scissors while I was young. He named me cutnapari (where cutna stood for scissors and pari meant angel). I used to shred loads of paper while young.

I know its a destructive habit, but it wasn't an expensive habit. Just a few papers shredded wouldnt cause much as much harm as much losses my Nana (grandfather) must have faced while I broke a lot of glasses at their place while on a vacation.

Usually, we used to visit our Nana's place during the summers. I remember the last day of school every year and we be ready to leave for Mumbai to relish the next 2 months in the scorching heat. Every thing about Mumbai was special for us. From the friends, to cricket, to Color TV to the cousins, to the random visits to different places and many many more things.
The Summer of 1996 was special. My family dropped me at Nana's place and left for Pune for some reasons. Alone for approximately a month, all I could do was create troubles for my Nana.

I remember I used to play cricket with folks from the building, and that used to be from 10AM until 4PM. Now, how do I spend the remaining time with practically no one of age to talk to. So I started reading the Gujarati paper. I learned reading Gujju during this period and gained a good momentum in reading too.

It so happened that one day, when I returned from play, I saw my Nana, working in the kitchen trying to fix his spectacles. I went in to drink water and some how and I swear I didnt do it on purpose, I stepped onto my nana's spectacles which he had just fixed. The left side of the glass was shattered (give that I was obese) and all I could do was apologize. I could feel the anger, but he let go. He got a new glass the very next day and the remains of the old ones were placed in the world famous 'TajMahal Cupboard'.

My Nana used to collect a lot of vintage / antique stuff in a show case. The most precious thing that he preserved was a huge replica of the TajMahal made up of a decent number of marbles and was well crafted.
So we unanimously used to refer the show case as the 'Tajmahal cupboard'

The second day, of when my Nana kept the old shattered glass in the cupboard, I tried to pull it out and fix the same. Although, I had no intentions to cause further damage, the way I pulled the broken spectacles caused one of the pillars of TajMahal entangled and 'pluck' it popped out. Such a situation usually causes panic and I panicked.

To much worse, I tried to save the pillar and broke the front facing glass of the famous Taj Mahal Cupboard.

I thought for this one atleast I would be grounded bad. But my Nana left it aside and went back to his room. I was shocked to know that. I apologized to him and he was all cool and calm. I felt blessed not to get any comments from the family's most angry young man.

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