MY GOLDFISH DIED

(A short story based on real life events. This is a simple story of how very similar events happening in different places leave totally different impressions on our minds)

It was morning and it was time to feed the fish. As per my normal routine, I tapped on the glass bowl with the nail of my index finger and whispered a “Good Morning Goldie”. But something seemed a bit strange that day. Every morning as I tapped on the glass, I was used to seeing my favourite pair of goldfish dart across the water and greet me with an expectant smile. It was breakfast time and while they danced, I fed them blood worms. Today, I didn’t see them come at me. One of them had bloated up and was floating on the water surface. The problem with fish is that they don’t know when to stop eating. Not only fish, its actually the problem with many humans too. I noticed the bulge in the stomach of the dead fish and remembered the words of someone saying, “Fish hardly ever die of hunger, most eat themselves to death”. I said a short prayer for the departed soul. The sight of fish floating on water is not a great sight at all.

That night, in another part of the country, a storm was brewing. A deep depression over the Bay of Bengal brought gale force winds directly to West Bengal and ravaged it throughout the night. Never ever had Bengal been through such devastation before. Hundreds of trees were uprooted and the city of Kolkata went into total darkness with light poles falling and electricity cut off. With torrential rain and floods, rural Bengal, especially the Sundarbans area, got washed out in a single night. Next morning was grim. Bodies of cattle, and even people, were seen floating on the water. Horror stories emerged of how people’s homes in the rural places were flown away with the winds. The devastation was unthinkable. Bengal was ravaged. And so were the people. On one hand was the lockdown due to the corona virus, and on the other hand the people had to deal with this calamity. It was as if hell had scored the winning goal. Not only were people’s homes gutted, they had nowhere to go – there was no food and shelter for them. Hundreds of people became homeless in a single night of nature’s fury. They had named the cyclone AMPHAN.

In this scenario, I decided to call my domestic help (her name was Pushpa) and ask about her wellbeing. She had been working with us in Mumbai for many years and had recently retired to her native place in the Sundarbans. I was concerned of her family’s safety. It was difficult to get through to her whole day as phone lines were down and the whole of Bengal was out of mobile coverage due to damaged mobile towers. After trying for a while, I gave up and hoped that I could get some news shortly. I became busy in Mumbai and the next two days were spent in doing whatever we could to help people in need in Bengal and getting the message of their plight to the rest of the country. We were using the hashtag #HelpBengal and #Amphan. Quite surprisingly, none of the national news media were talking about the carcass of Bengal – the whole world was too busy discussing the effects of COVID. Nothing at all seemed to be as important. Not even non COVID deaths.

After two days I received a call from Pushpa. She was weeping uncontrollably over the phone. At first, I though her family had not survived #Amphan. After a while when she regained her composure, she told me that her family was safe. Their house was flown away by the storm and they were staying at a high school. Hundreds of people, all putting up in whatever places were left intact or partially intact. They were grieving for the loss of their livelihood. Everyone had their own story to tell. I offered her money. She said she needed supplies not money. And then she told me what was bothering her the most. The family had a pond where they did fish farming. It was the main livelihood of the family. Whatever happened, the family never ever ran out of food because the pond had hundreds of fish of different types. The pond was more precious to them that anything else they had. They didn’t have much. But they had the pond. She recounted her ordeal on the night of the storm. The family had to escape from the house as it was breaking and took refuge in the shelter of the high school. The first thing that Pushpa had done the morning after was to rush to the pond. The water in the pond was not visible. The surface was covered with floating fish.

I closed my eyes. On one hand there was this single gold fish floating in my bowl. And on the other I imagined the pond. Quintals and quintals of dead fish, floating on the surface of the water which had got contaminated with the salt water from the nearly Bay of Bengal. Somehow. both these stories struck a chord. Somewhere, there was a distant link. The gold fish in the bowl had died of overeating, and the hundreds of dead fish in the pond took away with it the food of a family. Life is filled with dichotomy; yet. it is entwined in its web of similarity - in its unique stories.

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Capt. Shoukat Mukherjee is an International award-winning business leader, trainer and public speaker. He is the author of the bestselling book 'Mind Over Water', maritime industry's first book on Leadership development and Team Building.

To connect with Shoukat or to book him for a lecture of training workshop please write to him at '[email protected]'

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