'Fishy' Tale

I have recently visited a makeshift aquarium. It is not an aquarium in itself as it contains primordial tanks of gargantuan size and shape. All these tanks have water, full to their brim, and are used to breed and hatch fish of all varieties. The whole place stinks with live fish and the frogs, considered to be potential killers of breeding fish, sing with croaking tenor to exhibit their presence in the slosh nearby. It is a fine establishment of fish nursery as the owner has successfully established himself a fish tycoon. The place is haunted with potential buyers, especially children and teenagers who come, choose and pack the fish of their likings. As I was roaming around the place, i found two or three fish of different varieties swimming in more or less like a cesspit tank of water of a microcosmic size. I wanted to find out how they came in there, as a gutter disgorged its contents into that cesspit tank. Then on closer examination, i found a few fishes were swimming in the outlet passage of water from the cesspit tank. I was quite shocked to find a few fish floating on the surface of the water. As the gutter emptied itself to the cesspit tank, that had a very minimum capacity for the volume of water to be held in it, it was emptying the overfilled water into the outlet passage. As a few fish were fond of adventurism, they found themselves let into the outlet passage and suffocating. Some were in limbo, as they were dangling between the rim of the cesspit tank and the cascading water off it. On enquiry, i learned that they had escaped from their respective tanks while they were trawled for transportation to a different home. When i reported the fate of the fish to the employees and also to the owner, i found them giving a very casual reply as they were approaching the fish as commodity and not as one of life. I strongly believe that the buyers of fancy fish, for to be kept in aquarium, would share the same temperament and bent of mind. I felt nauseating not by the stench that the place produced but by the attitude that the humans who were there exuded.

An Unusual Lesson

A couple of days ago, i witnessed a daring act. As usual, i was in a bus (many of my adventures, whether they are predetermined or co-incidental, happen when i am travelling on a bus or in a bus for a reason not under the perspicacity of mine), sitting juxtaposed with the driver and very close to the windscreen. As the bus was pacing at around fifty kilometres per hour, on the hot tarmac, a strange movement was spotted in the middle of the road, some three hundred metres from where the bus was, and in front of it. A turtle (surely not a tortoise, as there were water bodies on either side of the road) was in the middle of the road practicing jay-walking from the right of the bus to the other side. It was pensive as it took a lot of time to move its transporting tentacles. On the opposite, as contra-flow, a truck was pacing at a steady pace. The driver of my bus saw the movement and avoided the tyres of the bus trampling over the turtle. I also saw in the rear view mirror on driver's side that the contra flowing truck also showed munificence. The driver commented that no driver would run over such creatures. I quipped that only when they had seen the turtle, as it was very tiny and its movement was slow, there was a possibility of not seeing it.

That made me stumble on something. I never gave much thought over watching my foot movement as i walked. Once accidentaly, i watched where i put my foot. To my surprise, i found several tiny creatures using the path to tread as well. I found millipedes crossing, ants scuttling and gastropods slithering past. Then i started wondering about their courage, in a world of formidable marauders, though the marauders did not eat them, they caused peril to them inadvertently. Could the turtle make it to the other side? I do not know. It is possible. Once i thought of preventing my friend from stepping over an ant scurrying past before us. I checked myself to see what would happen, as my friend who was looking at me while walking with me, while i was looking down on the earth. His step did just miss the ant and it continued its journey unhurt, as my friend, who was unaware of his escape from a kind of grave sin, ambled with me enthusiastically narrating an incident. I learnt through these things that there would not be necessary in the world any kind of watch-over on anything. Things happen as per planning, that is, if there is any such planning.