03 – The Goldfish Tragedy
Once, when Mukunda was six years old, he brought home a goldfish given to him by his aunt. The fish was put in a tank where water was stored for domestic purposes such as cleaning and scouring. One of the first things Mukunda did every morning was to go to the tank to watch the pretty whirlings of the fish. In this daily visit he was usually joined by his elder brother Ananta and his eldest sister Roma.
One morning Roma was the first to get up. She went as usual to gaze into the tank. The fish was missing! Looking around, she was horrified to find it lying dead on the cement floor a short distance from the tank.
“Who killed the little goldfish?” she cried.
A servant confessed that he had hastily taken water from the tank for his housework and had inadvertently lifted out the fish in the bucket he was using. In splashing water on the floor, he had caused the death of the fish.
Mukunda soon appeared on the scene. When he saw what had happened, he cried. “My little fish! My poor little fish!” Alternately he wept for the goldfish and stormed at the servant who had killed it. Unpacified by anything said by his relatives, Mukunda left the scene of one of the first tragedies of his life and climbed the stairs to the highest floor. There his sobs continued. He would not look at his Bengali and English primers nor touch any food that morning.
His father understood the child’s grief. A strict disciplinarian, he told the servant that there could be no room in his home for such a careless worker. But the dismissal was no consolation to Mukunda. What, alas, could replace his little goldfish?
His father had to go to the office; his elder brother departed for school. The mother and sister were faced with the problem of comforting Mukunda.
Seeing her child fasting, the mother would take no food herself. She asked his sister to try once more to talk with him. Mukunda was hiding himself. Roma searched until she found him sitting on the topmost stair, his face darkened with sorrow, his eyes still wet with tears.
Soothingly his sister reasoned with him. He appeared not to hear her. But when she explained that their mother also was fasting, because of him, he yielded. Roma lifted him in her arms to carry him downstairs. As she did so, she discovered that both his hands were tightly closed.
“What are you hiding, little brother?” she asked softly.
“Please, don’t ask me,” Mukunda replied.
“Do just let me see, won’t you?”
“No, no, please don’t,” he implored her, hiding his little fists from her gaze.
But at last he reluctantly agreed to reveal his secret. When he opened his hands, she saw that in one of them he had a small pencil. In the other hand he held a tiny diary. On a page he had written in English:
my red fish is die
Mukunda, whose later poems were to thrill the soul of the world, had struggled for the first time with words, in memory of one of God’s creatures.
