Candle Stick Entertainment

It’s funny how old memories can sneak in on you so damn unexpectedly. Take my case today; I walk in to my house in Kerala after a month or so in Bangalore. Amma is a neatness freak and I was absent for a month so everything is infuriatingly occupying their destined spaces. But something is definitely amiss.

It turns out that nothing is amiss, just that some new junk got added to the display. What was surprising was the color of the artifacts. Bright Gold! Surprising, considering that my mother avoided bright colors like the plague and she was especially averse to metallic curios.

With all due credit to my artistic taste, the four metallic candle sticks/bowl did look grotesque. I was picking one of the candle sticks when I got this rush of old memories. I had seen this somewhere! In fact the piece was so familiar that I knew each and every milli/micro/nano point of it. It was a dear old child hood friend.
It is quite natural that at this point you label me a certified lunatic who befriended candle sticks during his child hood, but hold on, A Genius needs explanation doesn’t he? During those dark childhood days, when one’s opinion and vote counted for naught, I was subjected to some truly horrible Chinese torture techniques each day. It would last 15 minutes and was for reasons beyond my comprehension called “prayer”. During these 15 minutes of family prayer, I was not only expected to pray but also forego all my God given motor abilities to worship God(yeah I know, so illogical!).

It is during one such prayer session that I found a friend in this candle stick. It had solidified and molten wax all over it. I picked out pieces of wax and then shoved them back into the fire small piece by small piece till all of it melted and fell down again. It was a highly interesting way to pass time during prayer.
For years, I used to pass prayer time playing with this candle stick, cleaning it, scratching it, solidifying and melting the wax again and again and again and again in one huge cycle. God’s gift to me!

I hadn’t seen this candle stick after I left for my engineering. I never thought about it either. In fact the last time I saw it, its color was something near black after years of use (misuse?). It is now gold plated, looking good as new and waiting for the next child.