Fish
Updated: 3 days ago
-Sarvajit Mukerji
“He comes from a broken home”…. It was the principal speaking. This was the second time that she was mentioning this to his class teacher.
He continued looking fixedly at the fish tank outside the principal’s office. He had been told to stand there as a punishment. The aquarium was like a house too, the kind of house he drew in his drawing copy— a rectangle, with a triangular roof. Was his home broken then? Smashed to pieces, like the tablet that he had once inadvertently dropped? The memory of the stinging adult palm striking his face with vicious force brought tears to his eyes even now. Broken home. If the aquarium broke, would it be a broken home, he wondered? After all, this rectangular glass box was home to the fish. If the aquarium broke, the fish would all be dead.
Another morning. He was outside the principal’s office again, only this time his mother was with the principal. “We do make allowances Mrs. Mehra, seeing that he comes from a broken home….” He looked at the fish tank unblinkingly. A small silvery fish streaked up towards the surface, and then dived down swiftly. It seemed to rejoice, free…. His mother’s hand roughly jerked his shoulder. Even though nothing had been said as yet, he knew she was angry and would hit him when they got back. When did she change? he wondered, as his mother drove the scooty back to the one-room apartment they lived in now. When did they leave the spacious flat, the home that was broken? When did they go to live with Nani? She used to be so much fun earlier. She taught him rhymes. She told him stories.
He lay on the bed. Tears had left streaks on his dirty face. His dinner lay untouched on the plastic stool next to the bed. He watched his mother working feverishly at her laptop. She looked defeated, as she frowned at the flickering screen before her. He wanted her to lie down next to him as she used to. To tell him a story as she used to every bedtime. He closed his eyes and vividly saw the little fish diving deep down, a sliver of silver, and then rising to the surface effortlessly. He drifted into sleep.
‘Mam, Mam, Aju aaj phir bread aur achaar laya hai’ shouted Raghu and Sunil. He closed his lunch box, the food untasted, and wandered off to see the fish. The aquarium stood in the veranda outside the principal’s office, and Anu Aunty was feeding the fish. “Aunty do the fish eat the same food every day?” he asked. “Haan, beta. The same every day”.
---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ------
The atmosphere around the school swimming pool was pulsating with excitement. The inter-school swimming competition was on in full swing. Water splashed. Children in colourful swimming caps and dark goggles raced each other, while others dived off the diving board. “Breast stroke”, “butterfly stroke”, “back stroke”…. words Aju had never heard before. Diving straight and sure into the blue water like a kingfisher, a thing he had never seen before. The air was vibrant with excitement. The water buoyant and blue. Announcements were met with resounding applause from the viewers sitting under a striped awning. Aju watched wide-eyed, his heart thudding. Every swimmer was a fish. They were at home under the blue sky, the blue water was their element. This was where he belonged. To a home that could never be broken.
---- ---- ---- ----
Aju stands tall and erect on the podium. A golden medal on a blue ribbon glints on his proud chest. The band plays his school anthem. He makes eye contact with his mother sitting in the front row. Her face crumples as she raises both hands high above her head to clap for her champion son.
About the Author:
Professor Sarvajit Mukerji is a Professor in the Department of English, University of Allahabad. His areas of interest are Ecocriticism and Feminism. He has published around 30 papers in national and international journals. His book on T.S Eliot, The Poet and His Times was favourably reviewed. His paper published internationally, entitled “What I Learnt from Bridget” on the celebrated novel, Bridget Jones Diary, was published in 2019. Recently “Junoon: The Anglo-Indian Connection” has appeared as a chapter in Literature Across Mediums.
Comments