You and me had gone together to bring them home,  I remember.  They looked so beautiful together, dancing and playing in a world of their own.  It took us lot of studies on the Internet and researches to understand their choices, preferences, food, comfort and then,  with much care and choice we buit their house…..’home’ they would make by staying into it. The next day we went to bring them to us.

I sat there hours watching the two gold fishes together in the new fish bowl of ours placed just beside our bed.  They looked so adorable together.  They simply refused to move without the other and for the next few days, I remember, forgetting everything,  just to laze on my bed and keep watching my two gold fishes playing in the  water. You would sit beside me and we  appreciated their beauty together.

At times I felt jealous of the gold fishes. All they had in their world was the water and each other. No  botheration of life, nor a job to report to every morning, no compromises to make, no plannings for the future nor any materialist desires….. So simple was their life.  They could always be beside each other,  that small  fish bowl was the world of the two.  I wished you and me could also be like them, always inseparable and always in love our own transparent world.

I developed such a bond with them, that I used to think that they  are two lovers at my home and all I had to do was to facilitate them everything, so that they get to love each other more and more everyday. The gold fishes , may be understanding my secret symbolism to them,  kept dancing in the water,  building a ‘love world’ of their own.

When you and  me lay beside each other in bed watching them, in my heart I felt as if they were just our images. An Image of ‘ what we would have loved to be’ …. always together, in a wonderfully simple world of our own, which we have built with our love and  where all that mattered was companionship. The association of ‘us’ with the two gold fishes’ became so strong that I started believing that  it was ‘us’ , together in a peaceful land of happiness that we have created for ourselves.

I wanted the gold fishes to always be together and happy in their own world, may be beacuse I associated you and me with them.

Within a few days, one of the gold fishes, caught an infection and the tail turned white. The movements became slow and the two could not keep on playing as before , nor could they swim to the top of the tank.  Yet the two  always remained together.

We read articles, to understand the diesease, brought medicines and tried our best. You said that we have to be prepared for the worst as an article in the net writes that there can be deaths in the initial time of building a habitat in a fish tank.

There were nights when you and me lay awake,  watching the gold fish in pain and its lover, quietly swimming along with it, trying to give it the best possible company that it could. They didn’t look happier as before…… as if someone had just ruined their world of “love”. One night the Gold fish passed away. I couldn’t see it and spent the night in the other room.

The other gold fish mourned and remained alone in the tank, helplessly moving here and there…. probably searching for the love mate.

A phone call came that night, and you told me that you were leaving. The Visa was ready. It was like a blow, but I had no alibi to stop you. I remember standing in the airport, seeing you off while you passed on your baggage to the checking. One last handshake and few exchanges of  “take care” and in few minutes you would be away, thousand of miles away from me. So far, that even if I were to shout aloud to you in distress, you wouldn’t be able to be near me like always.

One last wave and you walked towards the Immigration desk… from where, I would no longer be able to see you.  I saw you walk up towards the Immigration desk,  just  that you looked very blurred and I felt as if the burden of the world was on my shoulders, with you no longer there beside me to share it.

You went away. I came home from the airport and switched on the light of our room.  Everythimg seemed so strange, so unknown. In just few hours , the room metamorphosed into an unknown land,  as if I  have never stayed there before. I opened the wardrobe and still felt you are there with your smell lingering in your clothes… but didn’t find you anywhere.  Everything felt so cold, so bleak. With you there in the room, I never realised this, but now it looked so ugly, so claustrophobic, so damn suffocating.

I drank a glass of water, tidied the bed and laid down, trying to fall asleep.

The Fish Bowl that we had so choicefully done  together seemed  ugly with the single gold fish  lingering there. It didn’t play and swim in the water anymore.  Helplessly in its lonely world, it quietly sat there among the shells.  I don’t know for how long, I kept watching the gold fish,  as if identifying an unexplanatory empathical bond between us.  But the Gold fish seemed so upset, so hopeless without its mate.

The next morning,  I woke up only to discover that the other Gold fish lay dead in the tank.  Loneliness had taken a toll and it chose death than to separation. I sat there weeping…… somehow feeling guilty, without any reason that I could think of,  for  eroding a ’world of love’ that the two Gold fishes had created in my home.

You called the next day……” How are you?”,  You asked

” The other Gold fish died yesterday.”, I replied.

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