“Hey! How did this leaf come here?” I exclaimed
as I was collecting drinking water from the tap in a pot. The leaf went up and
down and then I noticed that it had legs all over. On closer inspection I found
that it was a prawn, ¾” long and some 2mm wide.
The dam that supplied us with water was some 12
kms away. The water must have been
purified before it reached us: that meant a process of sedimentation, then
passage through coal beds and chemical treatment before it reached us. How did this tiny creature survive all that
and then swim through 12 kms of water? Or how could he possibly have jumped in
from somewhere else like a catfish after the processing?
I named him ‘Tiny’ and loved him instantly. (It
must have been a ‘he’ to muscle his way through). I transferred him to an old
fish bowl I found and scraped in a small bit of fish food I had. Fish usually
died of over-feeding so how much should I feed this little fellow?
I went
to an aquarium but its keeper caught a handful of 3” long fish from one tank
and fed them to bigger fish in another tank.
I gasped and shied away from asking him about Tiny.
Occasionally I would drop in a fibre from a
dog’s bone or a speck of fruit. Thrice he moulted his skin. It was then that I
realized he was a part of nature and belonged there.
The next holiday I carried his bowl and went to
the dam he had come from. Crowds had come to celebrate the showers we had the
last few days and the increase in the inflow of water.
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“Mummy,” a plump boy of about 14 was whimpering
near us, a packet of chips in his hand. “Sneha made me walk all the way from there,” he said, pointing to the beginning of the traffic jam.
“If I didn’t, we’d still be stuck up there,” a
slim and tall girl with long hair said as she returned from parking a Scooty
nearby. But he made a face at her and clung to their mother, a round lady of
about 45.
As I peered into the water I noticed some 5-6”
long fish. Here and there some fish were jumping even above the water’s
surface. I walked off the main course and came to a pool surrounded by some
tall plants. It looked like a spring, small bubbles bursting occasionally. Safe
from big fish, birds and drying up. I emptied the bowl there and bid Tiny
farewell.
“Mummy!” the whimpering boy was near us again.
“Tell Sneha that I won’t walk back again.”
‘Today’s youngsters could learn a lot from
Tiny,’ I thought and drove away.
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