It must have been the year 1923 or ‘24. My father had just bought a car. The top was cloth. It may have been a Ford. The place where my father was stationed at that time was the town of Nagercoil(now in Tamilnadu state) in the erstwhile Travancore state. There was no petrol available there at that time. It had to be brought from Trivandrum (the capital town) and stocked in 5 gallon cans.
One evening my father took us for a drive, my youngest brother—about 3 at that time—my two oldest brothers who must have been about 14 and 13 then, and me( I was about 5 or 6). After a long drive when neared our house, we ran out of petrol. My memory is that the 2nd of my two older brothers walked to the house to fetch the petrol. He returned fairly soon with it. By the time he returned, it was dark.
The petrol tank was under the front seat. You had to remove the cushions and lift the seat to get to the petrol tank. My father removed the seat and opened the petrol tank. We had no such thing as an electric torch. As it was dark, my father used a hurricane lantern for light. My younger brother and I were in the back seat. I peeped over the seat, watching him.
Suddenly a drop of petrol fell on the hurricane lantern. The hurricane lantern burst into flames and burst, which set the petrol on fire. My father’s face and hands got burnt and he fell down. I opened the back door and got out leaving my little brother behind. One of my older brothers ran and pulled him out of the car too. By that time the fire had caught onto the cloth top of the car. My father tried to put out the fire with gravel, but because of his burnt hands he could not.
By this time a crowd of people had gathered. My two older brothers, with the help of the people who had gathered, managed to put out the fire.
In the meantime, my father started walking towards the hospital. On the way he met someone in a bullock cart who took him to the hospital, where his burns were taken care of and bandaged.
My younger brother and I had been left at a shop by my father before he left for the hospital. Then, I remember a police officer came in a horse carriage and he took the two of us home.
The next day, my little brother was too scared to go near my father because he looked like an Egyptian mummy!
We were lucky, we were all safe, but the car was a total wreck.
