Pets In The Pond Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

Reminiscences 08

In our compound we had a small pond. The water from it was used for irrigating the coconut palms, arecanut palms and the vegetable garden during summer. We used to call it a 'kokkarani'(1) .

The pond was home to numerous plants and animals including a few water snakes. These snakes are called 'Neerkolis'(2) in Malayalam, the Asiatic water snake, officially known as the checkered keelback. It is non-venomous. During the rainy season, there used to be a large number of tiny fish and frogs in the pond, on which the neerkolis feasted. While the fish resigned to their fate silently, the frogs cried ‘keeyo…keeyo', when they were caught by the snakes. Big fish like varaal ate small fish and tadpoles(3) . We would spend hours, watching the activities in the pond.

I think I was in third grade. Joseph Master was our class teacher. In the science class, he spoke about snakes. And he named ‘neerkoli'. I could not resist the temptation. I jumped up said, 'we have a few pet neerkolis in our kokkarani'.

Joseph master too was friends with Father. So, the news about my pet neerkolis reached home fast and from there, it spread among our relatives and neighbors. Even the friends of my sister started to tease me about it. I had to hide in our granary in order to escape their tirades whenever any of them paid a visit to our home. Which was quite frequent too.

Notes
(1) kokkarani- കൊക്കരണി, small but deep pond
(2) neerkoli- നീർക്കോലി
(3) tadpoles- the little ones hatched out of the eggs of frogs. They resemble tiny fish initially, but will soon grow into tiny frogs, losing their tails in the process.