Swimmie

Swimmie was swimming in the small globular glass water tank. That was her whole world. She would go round and round taking in the sights of her immediate surroundings. The sights and surroundings never changed but since fish have short term memory she treasured her ever changing world. The only thing which was a fuzzy memory ; twice a day rain of its dinner from the horizon of water world and the air world. And she used to instinctively know when it was coming. Nobody knows whether it was the dark shadow approaching the tank or whether she could sense the sound waves made by shaking of its food source. Whatever it was, swimmie was drawn towards the horizon with her mouth opening and closing in rhythm and her tail making beautiful trails as it moved in the water. Sometimes she got little extra food and sometimes she didn't get it at all. And whenever she got little extra she also got the potty a little bit more which settled down well at the bottom of the tank. The water in which swimmie lived changed its properties periodically...like the moon which waxes and wanes every 15 days so did the water. Suddenly one fine day it used to become very clear when the visibility was 100% and then over a period of time it deteriorated to darker and darker shades of haziness. Swimmie loved it when it was at the brightest. But before the water turned bright, swimmie had to go through very tense moments...suddenly a big dark shadow used to approach her world...a big blue coloured animal which never closed its mouth would approach from the horizon and it would start drinking up the murky water in which swimmie lived...the space for swimmie to swim would get lesser and lesser...and then suddenly the big blue animal with the open mouth would start chasing swimmie till swimmie was trapped in its mouth. Then swimmie would feel herself being lifted out of her world and in the animals stomach but only for a moment...since the animal vomitted out swimmie into the still larger mouth of another huge animal...but swimmie could still survive and even swim in the stomach of the larger animal. With great fear and shaking all over, swimmie could hardly swim and she was frozen with fear and got rooted to a spot inside the stomach. Some moments passed like this when swimmie was gripped by the horror of it all . suddenly the first big animal with the perpetually open mouth again dived into the stomach of the larger animal and started chasing swimmie again. However hard she tried to escape, swimmie finally lost and was back again into the open mouth, but again for a few moments since she was discharged back into its tank world but this time the water was very clear. Suddenly swimmie was fresh and would start zipping around her world with a renewed vigour and zest. Thus lives swimmie in the water  in our house
Yatin Tawde