Saw these lanterns after a long time. They were at our dining tables by the beach. I have seen some of these put up for decorative purposes in many places before – but none in actual use.

In the village, we grew up sitting with family members in the evening by these things chatting away to glory. Later, in Durgapur, during those days of “loadshedding” (rolling blackouts), we did our homework and studies by these lanterns in the evening.

I asked the waitress if there was a special name for this in the island. There was not. They are simply referred to as a “lantern”. In Bengali, we used to call them “hurricane” (no relation to the storms – although if you let the wick out too much, it would cough up a storm of soot cloud quickly).

Folks who remember this, do you recollect the two clever pieces of engineering – a spring that was used to open up the glass container for cleaning and the lever that you pushed down to make space to stick in the lit match stick to get it going?