The fish and the grapes

He took another lap in the clear water. It was clear today, but it didn’t remain that way for long. It would get muddier but was never left that way by the long-legged people, the ones who came with nets. They would take some time but would clean the waters each time they stepped into it. There were many others who walked past the edges, over the bridges or stood watching him and the other fish, but these weren’t the ones that cleaned the water.

He had met many of his kind; many small fry and some twice as big as him, and most of them said that this was the largest water space that they had ever seen in their lives. He felt the same. He didn’t remember being in any other place before; and this had everything- food, fellow swimmers, and enough space for everyone.

And then came the frogs. They always had a lot to talk about. They croaked about many things, sometimes all through the day. But night was their favourite time, there was hardly a frog who would listen in silence. All leaped in excitement to share what they had seen.
Hopping in and out of water did bring in a lot of stories of ‘the rest of the world’, as they called it. The small fry listened to them in wonder, some even hoped that they would grow limbs like the tadpoles do, so that they could go out and look at all the amazing things that they had only heard of.
But older fish like him, though curious to know if anything new was heard in all the croaking, had otherwise learnt to ignore their noise. It was hard, as they were the loudest animals that they had come across, but it wasn’t impossible. Most of their stories were similar recounts of the places, animals and people that they had seen, and shared with the same excitement. It was hard to believe them sometimes; they said such incredible things like hopping around water bodies that seemed to have no end. They called them rivers and added that these rivers stretched out for even longer distances than what they had seen here.

The pool he was in, seemed to have no end either. He would swim all day and still be in the same shimmering water. Most of the frogs were definitely bigger than his kind and all had seen more than them, but he was fine knowing that there were hardly any other fish that could vouch for what the frogs said. After all, the frogs were known for their numerous stories. Who knew where they got them from. They were especially annoying when they called his kind – the frog in the well or the fox who came across grapes, whatever they meant by that.