Goodbye Gray

So we have just moved from Delhi to Kolkata. You know, personally I like to keep moving around. I like to explore new cities, new cultures, meeting new people and the like.And I have learnt that every time one moves, you leave behind some bits of yourself and carry some bits from the place you have left behind.

Gray was our grey colored Oscar Fish with specks of orange . Yes I agree we named him quite unimaginatively Gray!! I am clueless about the gender (Do fish have genders or are they gender agnostic? ) . Anyways so we had 2 aquariums in our house in Delhi. And Gray was the sole occupant of one of them .While we did have other fish, but for some reason, Gray survived the longest. For sake of simplicity I am going to assign a Male gender to Gray .

Gray had a distinctive personality of his own . It was difficult to ignore him. He would have full conversations with you , welcome guests , splash water on whoever sat next to the aquarium if he was annoyed , hide behind the filter if scared , fight the thermometer in Winters who was an unwelcome intruder in his fiefdom. He would respond to Good mornings and Good nights. He loved dried worms. The aquarium was right next to the sofa in our living room. If he felt that he was being ignored, he would bang against the sides of the aquarium till he was acknowledged and spoken to .His favorite game was to mess up the pebble arrangement inside and topple the plants inside. I miss him. And I wish we could have brought him along with us to Kolkata. Every time I look at our, now empty Fish Tank, I wonder if he’s well. I wonder if he knows that giving him away was very hard .And the fact that, that was the only option we had.

Isn’t it beautiful that there is so much love in the universe ?Isn’t it amazing that living beings we consider far less evolved than us can also be capable of such profound emotions . Unfortunately our understanding of love is myopic and hence much of our suffering is also self-inflicted . Only if we were to open our eyes and hearts , there is so much in our world that lends meaning and substance to our lives .

That’s the piece of my heart that I left behind in Delhi. And the memories of our togetherness are the bits that will stay with me forever.