Fish and Relationships

I had this idea that it would be cool to have more living things in my apartment. My friend Arjun, who moved to Hong Kong in May, left a small plant in my care but it eventually gave up on me; so last week I unceremoniously threw it away (sorry Arjun!) and headed to Nurenjie to pick up some new pets.

I got two tropical fish – one red, one blue. I put them in this nice bowl with dark sand and a few aquatic plants. I was so happy watching them swimming around and checking on them every once in a while, despite the teasing I received from friends about how dumbo it was to get fish as pets. Anyway I racked my brains for the perfect names for my fishies, and was leaning towards Tracy and Link, from the main characters of Hairspray.

The happiness was short-lived though as, when I came back home from work on Tuesday, the red fish was (yup you guessed it) no more. She (by virtue of her color I have decided that she is female), like many fishes I have seen dead before her, was motionless on the aquarium floor and shortly afterwards was floating belly-up near the surface of the water.

For a few moments I mourned the loss of my red fish but then immediately shifted my focus onto making sure that I keep the blue one alive. I got rid of the sand, since it gets mighty dirty with the food, and also threw away the plants, since it’s so much bigger than the fish and hence irritatingly distracting. So now all I have is the bowl, some water, and my blue survivor fishie.

As expected, a friend started teasing me about my dead fish. He said that the incident says something about the owner, and how I was not ready for a relationship. I take the blame for this teasing because I did tell him once that it’s proof that you are ready for a relationship if you can take care of fish. I knew that was going to come back and bite me in the ass! But anyway, in the end he did redeem himself by saying that maybe I was meant to have just one fish...

Jaybee also saved the day by saying that sometimes, no matter how diligently you take care of something they can still die on you -- fish and relationships included. It must be remembered, though, that the operative word in this statement is can; it's just a possibility, there is no reason to believe that it will. So despite the little bit of cynicism that the death of my red fish inevitably brought, there is still some hope in me. In situations like these, when you know you are doing all you can to keep something alive, the only other thing left to do is keep the faith.

Nowadays I feed my fish and talk to him and shower him with love, but I still do fear that one day I will wake up to find him floating belly-up in the surface of the water. However I am comforted by the thought that when that day comes -- armed with the knowledge that I have done everything I can to keep him alive -- I will be strong enough to calmly scoop him up, say a prayer, flush him down the toilet, and walk away...

...Then buy a new bunch of fish from Nurenjie.

Now only if new relationships were as easy.