A koi pond in Pondicherry

When we were taking a stroll down the Promenade beach and admiring the beautiful buildings, we stumbled on a heritage building in one of the lanes. An old bungalow now converted to a hotel for tourists. In its courtyard, there was this koi pond overgrown with lotus and other plants and I spent a lot of time, mesmerized, watching them glide in and around the lotus stems, swirling the water gracefully.The water was so clear and they were moving so fast that it looked like they were coloring the water around them, much like paint swirls in a glass of water. It made me wonder if they were in the water, or the water in them.

The Koi carp are native to Japan. I found out about this interesting village , 'Harie' in Japan that is called ' the land of the living water.' This village has an enchanting relationship with water. It manages to have a flow of  natural spring water through an ingenious system called ' Kabata' where  pools of clear spring water are used to cool and keep vegetables fresh , and also to clean dirty kitchen utensils. The bottom of these structures contain pebbles and rocks.  This is where the magic lies. The kabata have large Koi in them, hungry and waiting for the scraps from the kitchen. All the remaining food that is washed in the spring water is eaten clean by the fish. The fish keep the cold stream water clean as it flows back into the main stream that runs throughout the village and into each villager's house, back into the lake and streams that irrigate cultivated lands. And I am sure there is some value addition in the form of fish poop that makes land healthy and fertile!

There is a wonderful series called Wild Japan on Netflix. If you get a chance, do watch it. Here's a link to the video on Kabata - https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/koi-are-unusual-kitchen-helpers-in-the-kabata-of-harie-japan