There were a few fishes in the imagination of this man.
In the hope of making them real he had come
to the abandoned pond covered with water in the pond,
wherever there was water there was the verdant hyacinth,
an eye-smoothing mass of green.
There could have been a single uncoveredpatch,
but there was none.
THE Man would not have had to make the effort of pulling out
some of the hyacinth if there was a little spot
for him to dip his fishing line
Waist- deep in water, he carefully cleared
a neat circle of dark water.
Piling the bunches of pulled-out hyacinth
he made a cushion to sit upon,
He then made himself comfortably upooon the seat,
took a pleasurable puff of the' bidi.'
Having measured the depth of the water,
he fixed the fly on his line, thraded an ant-larva
on the hook, and placed his fancy in the water.
But where were those fishes?
As the day grew older doubt began to overcome the old hunter.
It seemed to him that the fishes of the imagination
were getting lost, llost in ever deeper sec recies.
On the edge of the po9nd, he was all alone, not a sound anywhere.
A cow had strayed over to chew on the hyacinth,
and he had chased her away.
What could be a more ideal fishing envieonment than this?
The hunter felt disconcerted,restless, like KrishnamachariSreekant
on the cricket crease, scoreless as yet without a run .
He looked this way and that; tapped the water tenderly
wishing as though to speak in a telegraphic tongue
to the fishes of his imagination.
He lit the extinguished 'bidi'.
appraching ev ening shadows
cavorted on the dark pond water.
Nothing much was visible in the dark
besides the white of the fly made of jute-stem pith.
Physical wearinessmingled with the shame of the day's mischance
was, by then, transformingtheold hunter into a new being.
He saw the hyacinth-covered, dilapidated pond becoming
and a schoolof thousands of sharks
rushing towards him,their saw-teeth held aloft!
Under normal conditions, he should have been froghtened.
But, surprisingly, all the hunter felt in his heart.
was the joy at the end of waiting.
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