Of Strangeness

I was at a friend's house the other day, making conversation, when I noticed her staring at me with a slightly astounded expression on her face. Before I could raise half an eyebrow, she said, "Man, you have strange life experiences."

Her words ring true. Just a couple of weeks ago, I stayed up all night working on something or the other while another friend was passed out on my bed, after having roamed the city streets all day. As soon as she woke up, we went for a stroll. We were passing the little market near my house and found a very strange looking fish serenely flapping its fins in very little water. The water by the way, wasn't in a bowl or anything. Just on the pavement, on slightly uneven ground. The people who got the fish sell chicken, so I have no idea how all of that worked out. I just know that I was there.

And don't even get me started on the fish. It looked like a baby crocodile. We stared at it for a while before moving on to discover a huge cage full of parrots, several stray hungry amorous dogs and sleepy cats. More fish, and a little kid who was extremely uninterested in having his picture taken with a fish but bullied into it by his father, the fisherman. I have really interesting neighbors, apparently someone took the weird creepy fish home to keep it as a pet. And how could I have missed the massive cage chock full of parrots? My only defence is that they don't keep the cage way out near the front door (and that way isn't the quickest to the main road).

Since then several people have seen pictures of the fish, been interested/grossed out or combinations of both, and not one person has been able to tell me what kind of fish this is. Is it possible that the chicken people of New Alipore have managed to spot some sort of new species?

I would show you the picture right now, but its 5 am and I have little Dan Savages running inside my brain yelling "DTMFA! DTMFA! DTMFA!" in shrill voices.

But that's another life experience altogether.