As a kid, I always wanted a pet. When I was in fifth grade, I brought home an injured bat (ya, the black, flying variety). My mother went nuts, threw the bat out and shoved me into the bathroom for a shower. After that I got a long long lecture that lasted for a while.
Since I didn't have a pet of my own, I was very supportive of those who did. My close friends didn't have pets, but my friend
Mahesh's friend had an aquarium. His aquarium was very pretty, had lots of colorful fish and shells and plants. Anyway, one day they were going to the local pond to find more fish for his aquarium. So I joined in. We fished out some small ugly brown fish and took it to his house, and added it to the aquarium. When I ran into him after a few weeks he didn't seem happy. Turns out the ugly brown fish were tadpoles. They grew into
lil frogs and ate half the colorful fish. His mother was my class teacher, so I kept a low profile for a
lil while.
When I was in the 3 rd year of college, I wanted a pet once again and so I asked my parents if we could have a dog. My mother refused, said she already had one ( :( Me!! ). Then I insisted on a tortoise, my parents didn't even bother to respond. Then I asked for a fish bowl, and
Pappa finally agreed. So I marched to the pet store and bought a big fish bowl, some pebbles, fish food, a water plant and 5 goldfish. Brought it all home and started setting things up.
Step 1: Called the maid and gave her the instructions.
Step 2: Watched TV.
Step 3: Got yelled at by my mother.
Step 4: Unwillingly helped the maid set up the fish bowl. Added the pebbles, set the plant and filled it with aerated water (I forgot to aerate the water. Mummy did that!!). I then added the fish.
Step 5: Called my best friend over to share in the excitement.
Step 6: We got bored after 5
mins. Turns out, all the fish can do, is swim around and bang against the glass!!
Anyway I decided to name the fish. So I named them after my friends -
Gulli,
Vinu,
Chaal, Kali (
Karthik - for some odd reason people called him that) and
Deepi.
Chaal didn't even last one night. It was floating belly up the next morning. I fished it out and played with the dead fish by poking its belly for a
lil while. It was really cute. This was a Sunday morning, so I did a formal burial. I called
gulli and dug a small hole in my garden and in went
Chaal. I said some prayers as
Gulli was staring at me with disbelief and my maid and mother were looking on in amusement. When I was done,
Gulli whacked me and we went on with our usual gossipping.
By the end of the day
Gulli was dead and duly buried. The real
Gulli whacked me again afterwards because I dragged her out at 11:00 pm for the funeral. The next day Kali followed, but I was at college. So when I came back and saw one fish missing, I was upset. My maid told me she fed the fish to the neighbor’s cat. I was appalled!! I was yelling at her when my mother intervened and asked me not to upset the dying fish.
?!?!??
“What dying fish?” I asked. “The black one in the bowl”, she said. “I think its dying. See how it is tilted to one side as it swims?” I spent the rest of the evening staring at
Deepi swimming lopsided through the bowl. In the morning it was floating belly-up. I was late for college so I asked my maid to bury it. I threatened to kill her if she fed it to the cat!!
Poor
Vinu was alone in the bowl. We did our best to cheer him up.
Pappa even tapped the bowl a few times when he came home for lunch. Mummy sang for it as she passed the bowl. We didn't talk in loud voices around it. Even my maid pitied it and prepared fresh aerated water for it. But after 2 weeks
Vinu gave out his last air bubble when I was in college and flipped over. My maid buried it and informed me when I came home.
I was so relieved!!! It was sad watching poor
Vinu swimming around on its own, looking out the fish bowl with its big eyes. The fish bowl sat there on its own. Eventually the water plant died too. For a while the fish bowl was used to hold our dis-functional TV remote.
I wanted to re-populate the fish bowl, but didn't want any more fish funerals (
Gulli's whacking was getting to be a
lil painful). So I decided to consult the fish expert -
Vinu (not the fish, the real one). He told me gold fish are rather delicate and hard to maintain. Ask the pet shop guy for some hardy fish. So off I went to the pet shop, but this time I took my fish expert with me. And we finally bought 2 angelfish.
The fishbowl was cleaned out and set up again and the fish were added, again. They were very pretty, all black with feathery fins. One of them had a single white fin. This time I decided to give them some classy names. The all black one was named Fitz, after the poet Edward Fitzgerald and the one with the white fin was named
Nemo, after, well,
Nemo!! After a month Fitz died. But I liked the name Fitz more than
Nemo, so I switched the names and declared that
Nemo died. And Fitz lived on.
After about 6 months though, Fitz passed away. But it didn't just die, it sacrificed its life, for ME. Don't laugh!!! It's true. I was sick with typhoid.... and it gave up its life for me..... and I lived..... you know..... sacrifice..... Oh forget it!! You skeptics won't understand the special bond between a girl and her fish!
In honor of Fitz I painted a beautiful golden fish on my bedroom door. I know Fitz was black, but the black fish I painted didn't look pretty!!
