Calm tank

Temple tanks are meant to be representations of pure and holy waters. The calm of the early morning water is wonderfully soothing and lets you reflect on the higher powers, even if it is only for a brief while before some other devotees jostle you, looking for their own space in the vastness of creation. Normally, the balance of the 'pure'-ness is maintained within the ecosystem of the tank; the fish and the water-plants strike an equilibrium by cleaning up the waste washed off from the rituals that use the water of the tank. The fish also get their main food from the devotees or from some of the temple staff, who make sure they don't have to always scavenge for their livelihood.

Like with all other finely balanced ecosystems, it doesn't take much to throw this one too off its steady state. Sometime in April, the Panguni festival saw the throng of devotees grow multifold. In their fervour to do good, they apparently threw in a lot of food into the tank; food that the fish could not finish off and so remained, rotting at the bottom for a couple of weeks, apparently. And then the fish began to die. Fisherman brought in by the temple authorities to clean the tank reportedly "...fished out more than 60,000 dead fish in a single day..."

A few days later, a faint stench stays in the air. Apart from that, the system seems to have returned to normal - the fish are back to rippling the surface, hoping that someone will feed them the right food!