Catching Fish

Under the brilliant morning sun, gentle monsoon breezes flow across a river’s meandering path and sway various vessels that float on the waves. In a sleek, polished yacht, a CEO, his son and his upper-class friends, idly reeling in their fishing lines for another throw, fail to perceive the growing mass of tempestuous storm clouds on the horizon held back by the rays of the rising sun. Only the son notices a lovingly hand-hollowed canoe passing below. Its occupants, trusting each other’s fishing expertise, don’t submit to their starving stomachs and confidently search underwater for fish to sustain them. These boaters need food to survive the sweatshop they must work at to pay for shelter from the incessant monsoon rains.

                  Seeing the silver flash of a fish that would make him famous in his village, a dirty loinclothed boy eagerly dives from the canoe into the similarly muddy river for the catch. The next moment, the CEO, also catching fish, excitedly drags his line in as he feels its pull. His son enthusiastically exclaims that his dad must have a colossal catch because the water starts churning from someone’s struggles.

                  “Pull harder, Dad, pull harder! If you show this off, you’ll be so popular!”

                  The CEO tugs relentlessly. Although his prize is heavy, by far the heaviest fish he has ever caught, it no longer fights as it is limply drawn to his expensive yacht. “This fish is an easy capture, fat, and ripe for the picking,” he boasts to his company. “It’s as simple to secure as revenues from my clothes corporation.”

                  His associate sniggers, “Especially from those money-wasting teenagers. They will buy anything at any price if its labeled ‘popular’.”

                  The CEO hauls his prize into the waiting bank in a shower of spray and foam. Without looking beneath the water, he turns to brag to his clique. Nobody congratulates him though, and he turns back to see what they are staring at. The object of their attention is the biggest fish the CEO has caught, but he should have caught it in the mall, not the water. There lies the once eager loinclothed boy, crying from the wicked hook that is buried in his hand as he agonizingly wrenches it out. The CEO’s speechless son looks on, his eyes wide with shock and his body immobile from trauma.

                  The associate only laughs, “My comment is more truthful than even I thought it would be. Your fish was as easy to catch as an adolescent because he was one.”

                  The first of many rain drops start to fall from the sky onto the two teenagers, and some wash away dirt on the Indian, revealing a startlingly white face the same shade as the CEO’s son. Making the connection, the son realizes his inadvertent part in the capture of his fellow adolescent. He rips off a piece of his prized GAP T-shirt to bandage his peer’s wound, but before he can finish, his father interrupts.

                  “Son,” the CEO explains, “even though you are temporally in the same group as this boy, you are as far away from him in society as the Sun is from Pluto. While he is a peasant, you are a prince. You shouldn’t serve him because he will be serving you as an employee.” Thinking that matter finished, he addresses the boat’s Indian occupant, “I am sorry you suffered from this accident. I would be happy to pay for your recuperation.” He takes out his checkbook and continues, “How much money do you need?”

                  The boy he talks to doesn’t hear, as the CEO’s words are drowned out by unforeseen roars of thunder. Both teenagers’ visages mirror the storm in its hostility to the CEO, and their howls of anger join those of nature in protest of his ignorance.

                  Although they are peasant and prince, the father can now see they have the identical tear-stained faces of twins. As both dive away from the yacht bought through the toil of some youth and the ignorance of others, he finally recognizes the costly GAP T-shirt plastered by water to his son’s back.

                  Once he had a brilliant morning sun, a loving teenage son and a fat fish. Now he is only left with tears, those of human youth and those of nature’s clouds above. Will he recognize what fills the hand-hollowed canoe which his hollow company lacks?