This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show.

In this episode, Family Secrets, from dark pasts to childhood pranks,

stories from Nigeria, India, Greece, and the U.S., all about the truths that can bind

kin together, or the truths we keep even from our own blood. Our first story is from Onaga Mahajan.

Anaga told this story of one of our open mic slams in Chicago,

where we partner with Public Radio Station WBEZ.

Here's Anika.

So my grandfather is the biggest miser that I have ever known in my entire life.

Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy and I loved him.

But that was after I really got to know him.

But up until my early years, I thought he was quite the penny pincher, to put it nicely.

So my brother, Anand, and I, we are two years apart.

We both spend most of our childhood with our grandparents

because my father had a transferable job,

and they made the wise parenting decision of just dropping us off at our grandparents' place.

So my grandparents lived in this small town, almost a village in India, in the state of Maharashtra called Chikli. So it was a little village where my grandfather was a lawyer. He was

well respected, well feared as well. And his father before him was also a lawyer. He was well respected, well feared as well. And his father before him was also a lawyer and a

landlord. So all that put together, ours was a well-educated and pretty well-to-do family in the otherwise poor and,

you know, not so well-to-do neighborhood. So my brother and I grew up in a neighborhood filled with lots of kids,

and all the kids were scared of my grandfather, as was everybody else.

Now, I say my grandfather was a miser because I noticed a lot of things about him growing up when I was 10 or 12.

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