Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Fishy, The Mortal Enemy

Max is not paragon of love as he seems to be, he does have one of the important anthropomorphic glitch, jealousy. He has two great enemies. One, an immortal stuffed dog (still immortal only because its 7 feet above ground level) and a small gold fish, "Fishy". At least twice a day while feeding Fishy, I motherese her and Max goes ballistic. He would jump all over me and accompanied by occasional jealous barks. This daily ritual is one hilarious spectacle to watch. The dire-consequences of this motheresing has gone to such an extent that when Max is around, I cannot even touch any other babies either but he can do anything he pleases completely ignoring me. It seems to me like an unfair deal.

The great ritual ended last night, Fishy died. She was going down for the past few weeks and I expected it to happen that same week, but she was tough and fought back. I am not that cognitively savvy and didn't have the luxury of time to understand even few of basic umwelt of Fishy but I like to believe that she had a good life. She was with us for almost 2 years, Max and I had immense fun with these daily rituals and I hope Fishy shared our view. As a kid, when I was around 5/6 years old, I remember the death of an Angel fish and the burial ritual we had in the garden using a match box as a casket (boy, do I miss that sweet innonce). It's close to impossible to give Fishy a decent burial with Max watching me like a hawk. So I had to give him his dinner and I buried the Fishy in the backyard
while he was still busy eating. Talking about the death of a gold fish might seem mundane and the stoic emotions doesn't help either but she was part of the family for two years. It reminds of the Q&A with  Jonathan Safran - "the first thing I would cut out was mammals, because I figured that mammals are the closest species to me. Birds are more distant and fish are still more distant.". It's very true and our emotional attachment to a fish is very distant when compared to mammals but that's not an excuse to plunder since last time I checked, we are not Neanderthals (and we never were duh!!) and thanks to evolution, most of us have a healthly frontal cortex. Inspite of all his jealously, if Max wanted to, he could have plundered the fish tank on the kitchen counter and he had all day, everyday and an easy access to do it. But he never even licked the tank and now it's partly self-evident to me, he enjoyed our moments with Fishy and jealousy was just a camouflage for having a good time. I cannot wish for a better teacher than him (and heck with my inferred justification).


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