Pyromaniac

Growing up into teens I was unaware of this word or its meaning. I was living in the best time of life, without even realizing it. Morning school and evening play. It is in those glory days that I grew cognizant of the awe of fire, its glow, heat, the crackling sound and the smell of smoke from burnt wood.

The first fire made was when I was in my native place. In a kitchen where my aunts were cooking food on the open stove(the Indian chula). I used to peak into the furnace and  poke the wood burning inside. The burnt wood revealed golden red chars lying within the ashes; this would have been mesmerizing to any little kid. I took out the burning wood and placed it in the pocket of the adjacent empty stove. The fire was out but it was still glowing red. I fed it some dried coconut leaves and blew; and viola fire was born. The later years I always carried a match box long with me (burning stuff became my speciality). Now even travelling from one house to another at night wasn’t really possible without a torch or flash light. Nope, both aren’t the same. The next house would be 20mins walk through dense foliage & climbing hilly terrain. I liked the torch. The torch was a rolled up dried coconut leaf (the entire thing folded in half and rolled). If it is beginning to extinguish then just waving it will revitalize the flames.

Back home during Diwali was another time of fun and experimentation, burning crackers with magnifying lenses on the terrace. Once we found a half burnt beedi and we got to work. Just then the building watchman walked up on us from behind. 'Hey! What the hell are you kids up to this time?’ .We froze in fear, I was holding the lens and my friend held the beedi, which was now starting to smoke. We spoke together that we were just trying to light it up and nothing else. He gave a smile and walked off saying we lit the wrong end.

The morning after Diwali night we used to scavenge for unburned crackers, flower pots and sparklers. We collected the baaroodh (the burning chemical) and packed it inside unlikely casings to make crude bombs of our own. It did explode most times but I remember once when it didn't (and glad about it). During school days we were put into the habit of using ink pens. This later resulted in us having broken pen nibs and empty ink bottles. Me and a friend filled the chemical in such an empty ink bottle up to the brim (didn’t really stuff it in). We later joined several fuse threads and inserted one end into the bottle. The apparatus was in the corridor right outside our home. I lit the long fuse and both of us ran to a corner, but within line of sight. There was blinding flash of light and a mushroom shaped smoke rising upwards. We couldn’t really see anything clearly for some minutes. The ceiling above discoloured black. The glass bottle had only cracked and lay there innocently in pieces. It was then, we realised how awfully bad things could have gone wrong.


 Undeterred we went on carrying out experiments the later years, some like-
-A‘Chakri’ by bending a cracker in a ‘U’.
-Removing the hard end of the cracker makes it propel forwards. Same happens if one stuffs it inside a particular pen cap.
-Attaching a long fuse green ‘rassi’ bomb to a rocket.
-Blowing up PVC and clay type drainage pipes & flower pots (unused ones, really!)
- Sequential blasting of sand castles (this took a lot of prep).
-We still couldn't master flight by making a whole rocket.

Those days will sure be missed. But I try to get in touch with my roots sometimes.

Like most recently I sprayed aerosol into an empty plastic water bottle. When lit, the fumes keep burning from its mouth and when its belly pressed, spits amazing fire balls.

In future I aspire to make fire the old and forgotten way, i.e. rubbing sticks together..