Enchantment of the Bonfire
After work yesterday, Shalini, Diya, Arabella and I went to Zaib’s sister’s place for a bonfire… Jess didn’t go because she wasn’t fully well and she expected it to be a cold night… She was quite right in fact…
But anyway… Bonfire… What on earth is a bonfire? That was one thing I went to find out…
Turns out that a bonfire is just what we all know to be a CAMPFIRE… It wasn’t even a very big bonfire but it was quite nice once it was lit… Zaib lit it after we arrived… He also lit some strong smelling dried plants in a cauldron to produce a lot of smoke and keep the mozzies away… (I don’t know how effective it was since I was still getting bitten… but then, considering the surroundings and the fact that it was at night, it probably kept a good number away and saved me even more bites…)
The place was massive! It was a bungalow with a very large garden! Along the boundaries of the property were apartment blocks but no one could look in on this family… Cos they were protected by a lovely canopy of tall, shady trees… The family had set up tables and chairs on the lawn and there was a bonfire set up right in the middle… There was even a little service table set up where the servants served drinks and a special local dessert that is almost like our Kueh Tutu only that it’s 4x the size… It’s made from ground rice placed on a metal mould with a coconut filling… It’s also steamed! But they eat it with molasses… I forgot the name… All I remember is that it tasted really good…
Zaib’s sister and brother-in-law were not in and he and his parents had gone to stay on the property to take care of his two nephews, Nazin and Emud… They were rather friendly and were quite candid in telling us that we should not stay long in the smoking corner (an outdoor table equipped with a lit candle under a lot of trees) because there are a lot of crows in the trees and they do their poop at night… They spent most of the night negotiating for a bedtime later than their usual 8pm… They were smart enough to go to their grandmother, Zaib’s mother… It was afterall, a grandmother’s prerogative to spoil the grandchildren… They were still around when we left after 10pm…
The rest of us spent the evening eating prata(!!) & beef curry, making polite conversation with Zaib’s father and mother, playing with the two dogs Pluto and Socrates (Diya thinks Socrates should have been named Barbie… And I agree… Socrates didn’t look the least bit philosophical… It just looked ditsy…), barbecuing cube-shaped marshmallows that were only made from pure sugar, and even listening to Zaib’s two friends sing and play the Banjo and a strange one-string instrument called the Ektara or something like that… (I know my dad would have liked me to sing too… but I didn’t… For 1 very good reason… They were singing Islamic songs in Bangla… I didn’t understand the language, and they were singing to a different God…)
Seriously, there’s something very hypnotic about a campfire… I’ve never been a brownie or a girl guide… So I didn’t experience enough campfires to know until now… Several times that evening, conversations would cease, things would be still and everyone would just sit around the fire and stare at it... Completely enraptured... Perhaps the fire was very cheery and lively, when the rest of the surroundings were in the shadows… Like the contrast between hope and despair… Perhaps the fire provided the only source of heat in a cold winter evening… I couldn’t explain it… But it was beautiful… There was a full moon out too! Utterly romantic…
Normally, this die hard romantic would imagine spending such an evening with the someone she really cares about or something… But not that evening… Just for once, she took in the whole atmosphere, without wasting time trying to imagine something that is purely hypothetical… For her, only what is true and real was adequate… And the fire, the garden, the moon and the whole evening was all true…
But anyway… Bonfire… What on earth is a bonfire? That was one thing I went to find out…
Turns out that a bonfire is just what we all know to be a CAMPFIRE… It wasn’t even a very big bonfire but it was quite nice once it was lit… Zaib lit it after we arrived… He also lit some strong smelling dried plants in a cauldron to produce a lot of smoke and keep the mozzies away… (I don’t know how effective it was since I was still getting bitten… but then, considering the surroundings and the fact that it was at night, it probably kept a good number away and saved me even more bites…)
The place was massive! It was a bungalow with a very large garden! Along the boundaries of the property were apartment blocks but no one could look in on this family… Cos they were protected by a lovely canopy of tall, shady trees… The family had set up tables and chairs on the lawn and there was a bonfire set up right in the middle… There was even a little service table set up where the servants served drinks and a special local dessert that is almost like our Kueh Tutu only that it’s 4x the size… It’s made from ground rice placed on a metal mould with a coconut filling… It’s also steamed! But they eat it with molasses… I forgot the name… All I remember is that it tasted really good…
Zaib’s sister and brother-in-law were not in and he and his parents had gone to stay on the property to take care of his two nephews, Nazin and Emud… They were rather friendly and were quite candid in telling us that we should not stay long in the smoking corner (an outdoor table equipped with a lit candle under a lot of trees) because there are a lot of crows in the trees and they do their poop at night… They spent most of the night negotiating for a bedtime later than their usual 8pm… They were smart enough to go to their grandmother, Zaib’s mother… It was afterall, a grandmother’s prerogative to spoil the grandchildren… They were still around when we left after 10pm…
The rest of us spent the evening eating prata(!!) & beef curry, making polite conversation with Zaib’s father and mother, playing with the two dogs Pluto and Socrates (Diya thinks Socrates should have been named Barbie… And I agree… Socrates didn’t look the least bit philosophical… It just looked ditsy…), barbecuing cube-shaped marshmallows that were only made from pure sugar, and even listening to Zaib’s two friends sing and play the Banjo and a strange one-string instrument called the Ektara or something like that… (I know my dad would have liked me to sing too… but I didn’t… For 1 very good reason… They were singing Islamic songs in Bangla… I didn’t understand the language, and they were singing to a different God…)
Seriously, there’s something very hypnotic about a campfire… I’ve never been a brownie or a girl guide… So I didn’t experience enough campfires to know until now… Several times that evening, conversations would cease, things would be still and everyone would just sit around the fire and stare at it... Completely enraptured... Perhaps the fire was very cheery and lively, when the rest of the surroundings were in the shadows… Like the contrast between hope and despair… Perhaps the fire provided the only source of heat in a cold winter evening… I couldn’t explain it… But it was beautiful… There was a full moon out too! Utterly romantic…
Normally, this die hard romantic would imagine spending such an evening with the someone she really cares about or something… But not that evening… Just for once, she took in the whole atmosphere, without wasting time trying to imagine something that is purely hypothetical… For her, only what is true and real was adequate… And the fire, the garden, the moon and the whole evening was all true…
And that made it truly poetic...
posted by thebemusedphotog @ 11:49 AM
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