The Unexpected Change in the Image of a Duck on Water

The Dimna Lake in Jamshedpur on March 5, 2016. Photo: Sourabh Gupta

FROM where he was standing, on the high embankment of cement and rock, the Dimna Lake appeared colossal and deep and grey, with bluish hillocks in the backdrop, some tiny blackish islands and a dark boat. The boat was slowly moving with two men on it. But from where he stood, the view of the watery expanse was panoramic and overwhelming to the mind and the heart used to tiny things -- the watch, text on the mobile phone, etc. The time was around 7.30 am in March. He was in Jamshedpur for a wedding in the family that day and, stealing time, had woken up early at the hotel and taken a noisy auto-rickshaw that climbed a small hill to reach this lake. He had seen the sun rise over the deep and wide lake and now it was orange and made the immediate sky pale white and he kept peering at the lake since its colour appeared to be changing.

He also noticed a duck, far from the banks, in deep water, chugging at its own pace. That was the image then. The duck on the lake and it was natural -- this cohabitation and this presence (duck and water). He assimilated the image and to look for and absorb any other such image or juxtapositions now peered to his right, towards the clump of islands. The boat had moved further and the water appeared to be the same. A monotony was spreading. His glance returned to the previous site, the mind already seeing the image from memory. But to his disbelief, the image had changed! Right in the middle of the deep lake, the duck had disappeared. There was no sign of it. The water - without ripples and calm -- had obliterated all signs of the bird. Where did it go? It could not have swam so fast. The mind with its habit of making images was puzzled. He was unsatisfied with the changed image and kept looking for the missing blackish duck on that side of vast shimmering lake reflecting the rising sun. And then he suddenly spotted it, floating further away from the spot he had seen it before and expected it to be when he had glanced back to look for the old image some time back. Now that the duck had reappeared, where was it all this time, he wondered. Certainly not paddling on the water since it could not have reached that far at its normal pace. So he kept on looking at the duck, like a thing of wonder, and how it was gliding on the deep water -- its movements -- to unknot the building mystery.

Photo: Sourabh Gupta

This image -- the duck on the lake -- was similar to image he had expected -- it had been restored with only the spot shifting a little further. But the mind was not tranquil. It had two memories -- of the duck on the lake from the first sighting and that of the lake without the duck -- and taken as a sequence this restoration of the first image could not be taken as continuous. He had been deceived once! The new image carried in itself the stress of a change. And it happened as he watched, unknotting in its wake the reason behind the disappearance of the duck too. The duck, paddling slowly, had dived into the water like a flick, entering the opaque water fully, vanishing under the lake and leaving the surface without ripples. So the scene, the second image, had been restored too. The realisation of this scene changing returned too.

But the question or puzzle, now it would seem apparent, was how long would the duck swim underwater and on which side of the previous position it would reappear over the water. The lake’s calm water, due to his awareness of the roving submarine duck, appeared different from before, not knowing when and from where the creature of his curiosity, would spring up. The water was not this calm, even though it was a repetition of the second image -- of the lake without the duck. This time, he knew the duck was there; it was not missing but it could not be seen. He tried, looking with futility at the unblemished surface of this side of the lake, to guess from where the bird will swim up, till it did, somewhere to the north-west of the previous spot, the new spot, as anticipated, considerably farther from the place it had slunk in. A few minutes must have passed and it was clear that the duck had swam very fast underwater, covering a lot of distance quietly. Again, the old scene was restored. But he knew the duck would dive in again and reappear somewhere he could not predict. He stayed put, seeing the scene and the underwater-surface images in succession, yet, in its predictability, getting anxious every time about the direction and the spot from where the duck would sprout up.

Eventually, he spotted another duck, farther to his right, similarly vanishing and reappearing. He liked the little jump in his heart whenever the ducks suddenly dived in, the cool feeling of the birds becoming fish-like and speeding swiftly underwater and then another jump of the heart on seeing them reappear. He was however sure that there was no such feeling in the ducks.