Lighting a fire – The Hindu

The matchbox rendered a valuable service to mankind in lighting fires. It remained a centre of attraction in every kitchen till recent times.

In the past, it was rare to see a house without a matchbox. The cardboard box with 50-odd sticks became part and parcel of every abode, the rich or the poor.

It looked small in size, yet it occupied a vantage position in my house, kept at a place so that it was readily available to all my family members. To misplace it was sacrilege in my house.

At the break of dawn, our kitchen would come alive as my mother would enter to undertake food-related activities. First, the ash and charcoal would be removed from the hearth to keep the kitchen ready for the next activity, After keeping easily combustible material inside the hearth, she would strike a match stick to initiate the fire. Later, heavy logs were used to make the fire steady.

All the care in the world was taken to ensure that the stick was ignited at a single strike. It requires the right grip of the stick and some skill to ignite the match stick. If not handled properly, the stick breaks and the tip goes off, making it useless.

My sibling and I used to vie with each other to light the fire first. Our joy knew no bounds when the match stick ignited with a whoosh.

Sometimes, when my mother was not around, we would ignite stick after stick for pure fun. On a few occasions, we not only burned our fingers but was also punished by my mother.

If, by chance, the sticks run out, I was tasked with borrowing a few from neighbours. Sometimes even live embers were borrowed from their kitchen. It was a give-and-take system that prevailed then. Community ties were robust in those days.

The only difficulty with a matchbox is that during the rainy season, the box gets easily damp if not stored in a dry place.

During my high school days, the physics teacher, while teaching “forms of energy”, would always give an example of the matchbox while explaining how mechanical energy was converted into heat.

I used to collect used matchboxes and play with them, making toy trains and toy phones and even playing card games during our holidays.

Thus, I grew up with the matchbox. But with the arrival of gas and electric lighters in our kitchen, the matchbox receded to the background, leaving behind a trail of memories.

Now it is used only to light candles or incense sticks in the puja room.

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