During my first posting as a teacher
to a secondary school in a kampung (village), I used to indulge in fishing
after school hours. My favourite spot was on top of a huge boulder lying across
one side of a river. I would climb on top of the rock from that side of the
river. The fast water would race towards the rock, eddy below it and flow past
one side of it. The deep swirling whirlpool below the large stone was where the
fish were. I used to haul in a lot of catfish and carp.
On a particular day when I was on
top of the boulder, it rained quite heavily but I continued fishing. After
having caught rather a lot of fish, I climbed down on to the bank on one side
of the river and started to wade waist-high across it. I held, above my head,
the tackle in one hand and the haul of fish in the other. Suddenly, in
midstream, I found myself being swept away by a huge mass of swift, rolling
water. The water must have accumulated from the rain upstream.
I let go of the tackle and fish and
struggled to find a way to escape the turbulent onslaught of water.
Fortunately, as I was being swept downstream, I managed to grab hold of a
bamboo plant which had fallen across the stream when I was being swept under
it. With my body, still chest-deep in the fast swirling water, I slowly inched
myself with my hands along the bamboo pole to safety.
On walking home beside some rice
fields towards my school quarters, I deemed myself fortunate enough to have
escaped from drowning in that suddenly dangerous river.
I stopped fishing from that boulder
whenever the weather was threatening to rain after that frightening incident.
ltbs
The earth we abuse and the living
things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for exploiting their
presence we are diminishing our future.
Marya Mannes
