CANDID KITTEN - A FISHY TALE

Me, in full teacher-mummy mode,: "Where do fish live?"

Copy-Kitten, knitting her brows and thinking,: "In the fridge".

This was when my younger daughter was about two years old, and had not yet started going to playschool where she would soon parrot:

"Machli jal ki raani hai/ jeevan uska paani hai" (Fish is the queen of the water / Water is the life of fish).

Her answer made me THINK HARD. Really, Mumbai has no ponds to speak of, where I could show my daughters that, see, this is where fishes live. The only fish, she had seen where the ones we eat, coming out from the freezer to the frying pan.

Vegetarians will maybe shake their heads at this conditioning in cruelty, but then, when we were young, we ate fish but knew all the while that they came from rivers and ponds (both being near our home).

With ponds becoming extinct (or severely endangered) in Mumbai, it was my daughter's clear-eyed vision that made me realise once again the impact of our own thoughtless actions in destroying our environment.