January '05
Hi! I’m Goldie, a goldfish in a round bowl in the middle of a drawing room of a very interesting family. I have a whole table to myself, obviously round. And the strategic positioning of the table on which I reside gives me the best view of the drawing room, every nook and corner inclusive.
Today, in the afternoon came Mrs. Agarwal’s best friend Mrs. Almera with her not so tiny daughter, Tina who seemed like the perfect disaster, leaking at all times from all places with accompanied scary noises. Had Earth been my own kingdom she’d be banished from it long time back. The foolish girl first tried to scare me off by tapping on the glass surface. As if I don’t know that she’ll have to break the glass to get through to me from the sides of the bowl and she’ll hurt herself first. What do these humans expect? I’ll run helter-skelter. No way. But then to make things worse she took fancy to me and tried to poison the water I live in, my life’s sustenance and for a moment I really felt as if death was there, somewhere very near.
But as they say, “every cloud has a silver lining”, then came my martyr Kanav, ‘kanu’ as they call him and saved me from the little witch’s shadow. He’s 2 years old (a year elder to me-just perfect) and today (blush, blush and more blush) he kissed me, and that too a chocolate kiss, of course not in front of everyone. Mmmmmmmm… first kiss, feels like heaven, doesn’t it? To me too, it felt like heaven with gulps of water, while sliding on a glass barricade. But anyway, first kiss is first kiss, and Kanu is an adorable darling and everyone loves him, but he loves me. By the way he calls me “Goee” with love. (A sigh, a double sigh). But one’s fate is one’s fate and I have a fish’s fate, not even a mermaid’s, dammit.
Now here comes Mr. Agarwal walking in his entire prime with his head-up-so-high, but I wonder why? Coz whenever I look up I see nothing interesting in this house, just the ceiling. He was the one who brought me into this family but since then he’s never even glanced at me, never given me those morsels they serve as food to me. That time at the shop when he queried about me I felt as if he cared, but I was wrong- he was just buying a piece of furniture. If it hadn’t been for Radha, their maidservant who would know, I might have starved. And now even after all the work she’s been doing since morning, the master of the house is shouting at her and she’s listening quietly. I know she hurts, she tells me sometimes. He’s now telling her that she has no value for money, he, who with all his money could just buy me loneliness. All he could afford in the fishery was a single goldfish.
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