The TōnFerns Torchlight (or Flashlight) - DeLIGHTful Memories of Cumbiem Morod, Guirim, Bardez, Goa.

~  The TōnFerns Torchlight (or Flashlight)  ~

 DeLIGHTful Memories of Cumbiem Morod,
 Guirim, Bardez, Goa.

THE 'TONFERNS' TORCHLIGHT

A flashlight (torch in British English)
Circa 1962

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. In the pre-electricity days in the village of Cumbiem Morod, Guirim, Bardez, Goa, during the 1950's when I was a young lad, every household used kerosene or chimney lamps to light up their houses at the ring of the evening call by the Angelus bell of the village chapel.

Then as darkness fell, it was time to run home from the football field (actually rice fields converted into a playground during the dry season) just to be on time for reciting the Angelus together with the home folks. Then it was bath time, rosary time, study time, supper time and late night study time by the kerosene chimney lamp!

In those days, people used hurricane lamps for longer walks in the night. And my Grandma was happy relying solely on the candle power from the light of the petite candle placed in the hollow of a coconut shell.

A flash light was useful, and almost a necessity, if one had to step outside in the darkness, because there were no street lights those days.

Some folks kept a torch in the house to use in an emergency. It came in handy in many ways - like for instance returning home from the nearby chapel after evening 'salve prayers' or 'novenas' preceding a feast, returning home from the grocery, or to accompany someone home after a late night party or litany (ladainha), or to check on something rustling in the grass in the backyard, or to check out the sudden flutter of the chickens in their humble abode (perhaps on sensing a visit by the clever fox) in the backyard! It also came in handy to keep a night-watch on the vegetable patch in the vast fields in front of our house. In rare cases it could be very useful to fetch a doctor from Mapusa in the night or safely accompany a 'torch-less' tipsy visitor to his own home.

There were different types of torches or flashlights in various households, 'Eveready' being the common brand. There was also another popular brand called 'Winchester' brought in mostly by Goan people working in the Arabian Gulf. They required standard 'D' size batteries and miniature incandescent light-bulbs that used a tungsten filament.The bulbs used for torches were as follows, and I was an self-taught expert at this.

A 2-battery torch used a 2.8 volt bulb,
A 3 battery one used a 4.2 volt, and
A 6 battery contraption like the one I made would need a 9 volt bulb.

These types of bulbs frequently blew or fused out on a sudden surge, and it was a good idea to keep a spare bulb in the house. My dad had his pristine and prized silver anodized 3-battery version which he always kept at the ready by his bed side. I had a 2-battery type solely for my use, poor light beam of which I was not happy with. (And Dad would not let me or anyone touch, or get anywhere near his!) It looked something like this one below:

So this prompted me to invent something of my own which I used throughout my schooling years.

The idea was to collect as many as possible discarded standard size 1.5 V batteries from old radios in the village, have them checked for some life in them, and discard the dead ones. I made a box out of old plywood to hold 6 batteries of 1.5V each and used a  9V bulb, fitted with a reflector and rear spring salvaged from an old out-of-commission torch, and a miniature on-off switch purchased from Auto Popular in the nearby town of Mapusa. The switch was fitted on top of the wooden box.  As the torchlight got dimmer, it was better to compensate for the decreased light output by changing the bulb to 6 volts. 

This was the most powerful torch in our village in those days, with its powerful beam reaching about half a kilometer (across the perimeter of our ward). Electricity came to the village in the late1960's, but my torch still held on to its glory in emergencies and during power-cuts until much later.

Please click on the following link to a related article: CANDLE IN THE HOLLOW OF THE COCONUT SHELL
http://tonferns.blogspot.ca/2010/05/blog-post_17.html