Studying by the Kerosene lamp

LATE NIGHT STUDYING 
- Pastel Drawing on Paper -

by Tony Fernandes 

'BY THE LIGHT OF THE KEROSENE LAMP
AND THOUGHTS IN CRAYON'
Goa, India - 1961

Good old days they say. In fact our younger days eventually become the good old days. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and the days that follow will eventually become the good old days for the young ones among us, when they in turn will talk about the good old days.

Today, some of the good old days that I remember are the ones when I studied late into the night by the light of the kerosene chimney lamp while my mother, may God bless her, waited up for me as she was probably too afraid to find me fall asleep on my book before the kerosene in the lamp burnt itself out.

During my time as a student of St. Anthony's High School, Monte de Guirim Goa, I was a day-scholar and lived in Guirim. I had my own small study table and an old wooden chair with a cane-strung seat by the window in the 'vosro' of our little house. My father had made a small book-case especially for my books. (Konkani: 'vosro' - a living/prayer room) Various framed pictures of Jesus, Mother Mary, Perpetual Succour and our family's favourite saints hung above and on both sides of a mini altar (a traditional carved wooden piece of art placed into a niche in the wall).

By the time I got to the higher classes in the early 1960's, the table and the book-case was not sufficient for the increasing number of my text and exercise books. I was then 'promoted' to the big wooden folding table in the 'sala' (Port: sala - hall) so that  I could study in comfort.

However, the good old kerosene lamp still lit, albeit dimly, the pages of the books of my English, Geography, Science, Physics, Math, History and other subjects for sometime until my elder brother brought the famous 'Aladdin Lamp' from the Arabian Gulf that brightened the hall with generous luminosity - until electricity came to our quaint and little village of Cumbiem Morod in Guirim, bordering the villages of Canca and Parra in Bardez, Goa, during the the mid-1960's. We had a Petromax too, but that was used only during special occasions - for sung Litanies, parties and weddings.

I have often reminisced on these days of yore in the past. I have also often tried to depict the setting, first in my mind, and then in a drawing, and in my own humble way, I suppose I have managed to capture my thoughts in rendering them in crayon.