The Great Middle Class Suffering

I belong to possibly the largest demographic group in this world; a group which transcends national, race, ethnic, gender, class and caste boundaries – The Middle Class.

The numbers give the members a sense of camaraderie, a sense of belonging. In this belonging they collectively suffer from a common malaise – the label of The Middle Class.

Almost everyone who belongs to this group – me included – strongly desires or wants or dreams about breaking free and jump out off this group. For someone, the lure is wealth, for some power and for others fame.
Very few are truly content with the label of The Middle Class but for most it has become a curse.

This morning Junior died

I have been meaning to get a fish tank or fish bowl for a while now. Earlier, the wife had objections as where we would keep the bowl / tank. That’s when I had decided to put the bowl in the toilet. Ughh! Later the wife came around to accepting that I wanted to have a fish tank in the house. But then, like with everything else in my life, I vacillated endlessly.

A couple of week ago when I was in Pune I finally took my brother-in-law and bought four fish - two blackmoors and two gold fish. I moved the fish in a bag to Mumbai and installed them in a new acquired fish tank. My niece who was visiting gave me four smaller fish for my collection. After a couple of days of observing them I named the two blackmoors Ritchie Blackmore (after the rocker) and Junior, since the second was a little smaller. The gold fish I named Frisky and Digger.

I fed them regularly, installed a pump to oxygenate the tank and cleaned the tank weekly. Every morning and then every couple of hours I came by to watch them swim and generally have a lot of fun in their new home.

This morning when I woke up I noticed that Junior was looking very listless; floating around without the energy that I had got so used to. I knew he was not well. When he didn’t eat when I fed them all I somehow knew he wouldn’t make it. When I came back home in the evening he was floating on his side – surely dead. What could the cause be? Fungus? Over eating? Bad conditions in the tank?

His friends and companions of his new tank seem to be mourning for him and swimming half mast. Do animals grieve? Why do humans insist on having pets which rarely ever out live them? Do they have a fetish for death and the dead?