A book from Raddi

I was cleaning up the mess of old papers, old clips, old paper cuttings from the cupboard with my little helper. "what are these papers mom?" her query."Sweety, this is all raddi, I need to clean up the mess now". "Laddi???" (L=R) my daughter. "Yes dear, raddi is all the old papers, old books which we dont need"....my explanation. But this chat took me to the faraway land in my childhood where clearing off raddi was a bi-monthly affair and a task to be done with all the family members.

I remember my sister and myself would sit with our dad that day along with mom and clear off the old newspapers, books, magazines together. Then would start our paper
cutting activity. My sister and myself would have cuttings from paper like "Glow your face with cucumber paste" "Fashion world" "Tips for studying economics"...followed by cuttings for my mom "Mulancha aahar", "Khoklyavarchya gharguti upaay", "palakachi vegli bhaji" followed with the cuttings for my dad " dollar vs Rupee", "Kirloskar taken over by cummins" "ambani brothers". Then these cuttins would nicely go into one folder with the separators tagged my name, mom and dad. And the folder went into the cupboard never to be seen again untill next raddi clearing time. My mom was the only person who dug it occassionally to find out some new recipes or remedies..thats all...again into the cupboard.

Talking about raddi can never be complete without the books from raddi. Going with dad to sell raddi to raddiwala was a task looked forward to, as I got to buy a book
from there. One of my friends was also fond of reading and collecting books. Both of us would go to raddiwala and bargain for books. A book more than Rs. 5 was
extremely costly for us then. We would argue with him and say "Instead of buying this book from u we might as well go to new books store and get one there for Rs. 50.(??????) (which would of course never happen....buttt we proved our point that the book is costly and we wont buy. My friend finally exceeded the count of books with him to more than 300 and won the lifetime competition which we had tacitly agreed.

I have never understood till date the connection and relation between raddi shop and coconuts. Why do they have coconuts in every raddi shop...its always a puzzle for me and will remain.

I came into present when I heard my daughter holding one of my old books in hand and asking "Is this Laddi mom"?.....which of course was not....it was my favourite book "Oliver Twist" which I would never call raddi..but a CLASSIC...bought at Re.1. :)

Do u have any such Raddi or Classics??