Of Candle Light and Parties

Can pyromania surface as a fascination for candlelight? A kind of sublimation of the fierce urge to set fire to things and then watch them burn, and burn.

Perhaps. Who knows. And Freud is no longer here to enlighten us.

“I love watching it quiver ever so lightly, it almost seems to be smiling and nodding at something,” this is what I had told Omar once. It must have happened when I was in one of my candle-light-roof-top party moods. Omar had looked at me askance, as he tends to do when he seems to be having second thoughts about my credentials as a learned-wise-adult.

But in spite of his doubts, my sublimated pyromania must have appealed to Omar’s equally wayward imagination.

I am not prepared, not in this hot sauna-like evening, for an invitation to a candlelight tea party.

“Look! Thirty candles. I have brought thirty candles, and they are scented. I have bought a colourful dinner set for our parties. You will light the candles, you will have your tea, and I will have a glass of lemonade,” Omar tells me about the party that I have to attend, and arrange.

Notice the ‘will.’

“Omar, don’t you think it is too hot? It's the load shedding hour so there won’t be any air conditioner to make it bearable. The fan will blow out the candles,” I tell him.

“Of Course, we will not switch on the fan. If you don’t want to have tea, you can have coffee. But hurry up. I have also arranged for something to eat.”

Do I have a choice!

So here I sit with Omar, sipping tea, and looking at the thirty flames, wondering what are they smiling at and who are they nodding too.

The heat bothers. But Omar is happy, he tells me that I am the best, and this more than makes up for the hot evening made hotter by the wafting heat from the candle flames.

The sublimated form of pyromania seems to run in the family.

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