Well loving, and living

My fish died. She was a pretty karimeen - this is a pretty, tasty fish, known as the Pearl-spot, so named because of a spot shaped like a luminescent pearl just behind the pectoral fin. I used to love watching her swimming lazily a few feet below the surface of the water, coming up to the surface when my shadow fell across the water, obviously equating said shadow with underwater legend of god-like figure who dispenses mashed tasty rice like manna from heaven, doing a few pirouettes in the water and generally exuding a joie de vivre you wouldn't expect to see in a fish in a well.

She was one of ten fingerlings which we dropped into the well one September Sunday more than ten years ago. Eight died within the week. It's not nice, having to haul out dead fish after dead fish from a well, but after the third one, I became an expert at it. I like to think that the last two survived because I took them out and kept them in a small tank for a few days before dropping them back in. I believe the official explanation was that it was a small well, and it was nature's way of limiting the population to what the well could handle. Well, so much for me wanting to populate my well with different kinds of fish.

Including the two Pearl-spots, there were seven fish in the well. Two suckers, bought by my extremely practical dad to keep the well clean, and three small slim silver coloured fish which trailed frilled, multi-coloured phosphorescent fins and tails. The two suckers were bottom feeders and stayed down most of the time, clearly visible on sunny afternoons when the bright sun lit the well right through. The small silver-coloured fish were surface denizens, never going more than a foot or two below the surface. The Pearl-spots stayed at a point midway down the well, coming up to the surface on and off. Three well defined communities in the well. Or so I thought.

About a year after the Pearl-spots joined this small community, I realised that there was a lot of interspecific fraternising going on in my back yard.

One morning after an unexpected rain, I found two baby fish swimming around the well, staying close to the surface. They were nondescript really, less than an inch long when I first saw them, but as the days went by, they grew into extraordinary fish. One of them was breathtakingly beautiful, shaped like a Pearl spot, but with the trailing, multi-coloured fins so characteristic of the silver fish. The other, was a slim silver fish with a multi-coloured pearl shaped spot behind the pectoral fin and a trailing black tail. I was entranced, to say the least. And very proud of them, as if they were my own creations.

They lived for a few months and then one summer I found myself putting my expertise at hauling dead fish out of the well to good use. The two new fish, and all three of the silver coloured fish were dead in a matter of days. We were down to four fish then. I kept thinking about putting in some new fish, but never got around to it. One Pearl spot died about three years ago and now the last one's gone too.

One of these days, I'll go down to the Fisheries College and pick up some fingerlings so that the well doesn't look so empty. The suckers are still there, but they're not sociable creatures. They stay at the bottom and if at all they come up to rest on the underwater ledge near the water surface, they lunge for the bottom as soon as my shadow falls across the water. Maybe, unlike the Pearl-spots, they believe in a cruel god.