The pond

When I was a child I used to live in Uttar Pradesh, my father worked there as a doctor, we used to visit burdwan once in a four year. At that time the pond attached to my ancestral home was well maintained. I still remember the warnings given out to us, to never go near the pond because one of my nephews have been rescued from it. Don’t know about the authenticity of the story but it reined our adventurous spirits for sure.

When I returned to live there in 1985 it was still fully alive and a fisherman used to breed and catch fish there. He had to stop it because of the harassments by the goons of the locality. After that the pond slowly filled up. If I am not wrong it must have been sold by now, that is the plot.

But back then it was beautiful. I have seen so many colours of it. When I first saw it, it was simply blackish from my first floor window and a little transparent from the banks. It never had crystal clear water, may be because of the fishes. During the monsoon the water used to become green, clear, distinct green and then the small plants used to cover the entire surface. It looked really gorgeous but the fishermen used to drag them away and pile in the banks because they disturbed the growth of fish.

There were atleast seven or eight coconut trees, two jack fruit, a berry and four mango trees surrounding it. These coconut trees were home to families of egrets. Their babies cry like human babies and make a strange clucking sound in the night. It took quite a time to get habituated of them but in toto they were quite amusing.

It was quite a beautiful sight to see egrets meditating on the water and the kingfishers on the branches, in case some absent minded fish gives them too easy a catch. When these two birds fly they make a very beautiful sight. Especially the egrets when they are flying against dark monsoon clouds. I adore that scene.

It’s a real joy to have a water body near your home and my home at burdwan had atleast half a dozen visible from the roof top. Water bodies are truly beautiful and are unfortunately the most abused things too. I am a big advocate of them. I personally believe its utter foolishness to fill them up or pollute them unnecessarily. Sooner or later nature settles the score.