Saturday, February 04, 2006

A Fiery love story

She was a-little-over-four years old and he exactly a month younger than a-little-over-four. They had been friends for the longest time possible and spent all their time together.

He learnt this little trick of holding a matchstick between the forefinger and thumb, balancing the matchbox on the back of his hand, tossing it up in the air and striking the match. Its quite a feat, if you know how to do it right.

One day they were playing under the bed, and he decided to demonstrate his prowess by demonstrating this trick. Somehow the matchstick slipped, and the "modha" (the small cane stool), which was carefully hidden under the bed, caught fire. Before they could control it, it rolled over and the bedsheet caught fire, followed by the whole bed.

So he, the one with the trick and the intelligence, asked her to get some water to douse the fire. She, the one without common-sense, found a soap dish: the wrong half, the bottom half. Obviously, by the time she would get to the room the water would fall through those little drainage holes in the soap dish.

Girly Girl panics and screams "Aag". Parents come to rescue.

They get fired.

It was a bad accident, a misadventure that could have ended badly... Thankfully, both of them got off unscathed. And lived happily ever after.

One scar however remains: This story is often narrated as "They set the bed on fire".

Yes, they struck a match at four.

2 comments:

Sinfully Pinstripe said...

Waah, waah. Now wordplay even!

Mo said...

Sin, should have written the disclaimer:

Any resemblance to any character living or dead, may not be concidental. :)

Not only play with words, play with fire too.