Aquaria

Back in college days I had three aquaria – one for the guppies – the whole bunch of them with brilliant iridescent colours flashing mercurial all day. 

Another was for the fighters – they came in deep rich hues of magenta-mauve, blue- navy and sapphire with fan-like majestic tail fins trailing behind them.  Nasty tempers they had! Often their fights would make ugly shreds out of their tail fins. Then there would be nothing majestic about them and they would so look like rag pickers! Funny breed!

The third one was for the gold fish. I had a solitary huge specimen that went round and round – eyeballing me emotionlessly. I sincerely hoped it was enjoying its space and life! There was – sadly -no way you could decipher that. 

Keeping those tanks clean took the better part of a day involving various buckets and big fish nets – which were actually soup strainers improvised for the job! I loved keeping my glass tanks clean and my fish healthy.

Buying the grainy fish food packets and fresh worms for them, running the bubble machine; buying exotic plants was the fun on weekends. So was selecting and adding carefully measured liquid pigment drops to the water in my aquaria so that when the lights came on in the dusk it all looked so dreamy! I was very happy then and miss that time of my life so much! 

 

Then life moved on and aquaria and sundry other things that made up my young life were a thing of the past.

Till my Dad went and bought a pair of gold fish for my toddlers. With excitement mounting, we worked on giving them a pretty and safe home –with all my memories flooding back.

We bought a beautiful gigantic glass bowl for them – just like in Tom & Jerry! I didn’t have such fancy stuff back in my time. All I had was rectangular glass panes sealed together by black strips of tar. But I was so happy with that! 

Needless to say that my kids were ecstatic! We named the gold fish Hunky and Dory. There was no way of knowing which was which since they were like two peas in a pod. I’d have named them ‘Twiddle Dum Dum’ and ‘Twiddle Dee Dee’ but that wasn’t very easy for the kids to say; so Hunky & Dory it was.

That again is now in past. At present, my kids are busy with their lives but I have a companion – their legacy before they got so busy with their lives. 

It is a lost and rescued love-bird from Madagascar. It is silly and it has an attitude! It also is extremely melodramatic!

Being a full-fledged animal rescue kind of a family we always have some creature or the other – all varieties - two legged, four legged, feathered, finned and furry ones – under our roof. But more about the melodramatic love bird and our other animal rescues in the next post.

Great day, all!