I started seeing Aditya in my second year of college. It wasn’t till the beginning of third year that we actually started sleeping with each other, though. He’d been a virgin before me; but he wasn’t my first – my ex from school had that distinction. But what Adi didn’t have in terms of experience, he more than made up for with enthusiasm. He was basically totally awesome in bed – and kinda adventurous too! Just before our final exams in May, when we had prep leave, things really sky-rocketed for us. His parents had gone out of town, and my mom was perfectly happy for me to be away from home for hours since she thought I was studying at the college library. So, well, we basically spent about three hours in bed for every hour we studied. And then one day Adi said he wanted to try something different – using candles! No, not hot wax stuff (which sounded a bit painful to both of us), but just doing it while the room was lit up with candles. He wanted to see my skin glowing by candlelight, he said, and obviously I was thrilled. The day that was to be THE day for our candlelight sex experiment, we barely got any studying done. We met late afternoon, and mostly just kept waiting for it to be dark enough for candles to be of any use. Thirty minutes after sunset, the room had candles on every conceivable surface. Within another fifteen minutes, we were almost naked and in each other’s arms, tremendously aroused and beginning to get naughty and sweaty. Another fifteen minutes later, though, I was feeling more sweaty than naughty. Adi didn’t seem to be feeling the heat so much, but I really, really was. In fact, I was feeling so bothered by the heat that I could barely breathe, let alone enjoy myself. We hadn’t taken into account how hot and stuffy the room would get in late April without having the AC or the fans on – plus there were those thirty or so candles warming up the room. After a while, I just couldn’t take it any more. Despite knowing that I was killing his fantasy (and the mood), I told him that we needed to do away with the candles. If he wanted to see this through to the end, electricity was a friend we could not afford to ignore. Reluctantly he got up and blew the candles out, turned on the night lamps and fans and set the AC to full blast. And then we got down to business again. This is more like it, I thought! We made out for a while to rekindle the fire of passion that I had so effectively doused with my concerns about comfort, and then I got on top of him. But just as I was about to sink down on him, I pushed my hair back from my face…and got the shock of my life at the sight of fire of a completely different kind, seemingly heading towards me. The curtain facing me (and behind Adi) was actually, literally on fire. “What the FUCK!” I yelled and scrambled off him, nearly falling off the bed in the process. So, yeah. Basically he’d missed blowing out one of the candles next to the window – and the curtain had NOT been able to resist the combined force of the full-blast AC and two fans blowing it hither and thither. It had blown right into the candle, and as is the nature of curtains (or anything else made of cotton), it had burst into flame. We spent the next five minutes in complete panic trying to put the fire out. Obviously fanning it was not going to help. It eventually took a full bucket of water being flung at the window. I don’t know how, but by some miracle nothing else in the room had caught fire. The bed and the wall were soaked, so was Adi’s study table next to the window. His exam notes were completely ruined thanks to the drenching they’d got. But we were so thankful to have not burnt down the whole house that we weren’t complaining. Adi explained the mess later to his parents when they got back from holiday with some lame excuse about lighting a candle because there was a power cut and the inverter wasn’t working and stuff, but I’m not convinced that they believed him at all. They yelled at him for being totally irresponsible and banned him from the kitchen and anything that was flammable for the next few months. Anyway, the fire in the bedroom certainly dampened our fire and we went back to studying full-time, like good little boys and girls are supposed to. Which, in hindsight, wasn’t so bad, really – we both managed to score good marks and get first class for the finals!! * Names changed to protect privacy. Images: Shutterstock
