It's the Small Things | We Fed More Than Ducks

It was a narrow road that wound through the outskirts of our town – one side scattered with tall sugarcane, the other sloping gently toward the dam. We used to go there in the evenings, my younger brother and I, with a paper packet of puffed rice clutched between us and our mother’s warnings echoing faintly behind: “Don’t go too close to the edge.”

The dam was not a grand affair. It didn’t attract tourists or make its way into guidebooks. It was, at most, a functional body of water with a name nobody remembered – referred to only as “that side dam” in local speech. But to us, it was a complete world. There were egrets that stood like motionless poems near the reeds, small fish that darted away the moment you tried to spot them, and, of course, the ducks.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

They weren’t wild ducks, not exactly. But neither were they tame. They belonged to no one and everyone – a loose, waddling community that arrived every afternoon and left by night. They quacked among themselves, floated with unhurried ease, and approached us children with something resembling trust. It was not affection, I now realise, but a quiet understanding built from many afternoons of shared grain.

We had no particular reason to visit the dam, except that it became a habit. Our father was often away for work, and the days could stretch long in our small home. So, as the sun began its descent, my mother would hand us the rice and a towel, and say, “Go sit by the water, feed the ducks.” It was her way of buying herself an hour of stillness; it became our way of learning it.

Sometimes we’d take our small blue camera along – the kind that used film, clicked loudly, and required great patience. There is one photograph from those evenings that remains framed on our shelf even now. I am crouched, with a hand outstretched, rice in my palm; my brother, smaller and braver, is laughing as a duck pecks near his foot. Behind us, the water stretches grey-blue and calm. We are not posing. We are only being.

Years later, I would learn to speak of the environment in complex terms: ecosystems, salinity, marine degradation, and the like. I would find myself sitting in conference halls and classrooms, arguing the urgency of ocean conservation, measuring disaster in degrees Celsius and centimetres of sea-level rise. But it is in that picture, and in that memory, that I find the truest reason for why it all matters.

No one told us the dam was a sanctuary. No one said we were learning gentleness. But in those acts of waiting for the ducks to come, of feeding them slowly, of washing our hands in the same water they drank from, we absorbed something sacred. We learned that not everything needed to be loud to be important. That life could be quiet and still be meaningful.

Today, the dam still exists, though the road leading to it is wider, and the sugarcane fields have given way to construction boards. The ducks, I’m told, still come, though not in the same number. A few children still visit, guided more by nostalgia than ritual. But the place no longer feels untouched. It has changed, as most places do.

I sometimes wonder what happened to those ducks. Did they find other homes? Did the water stay kind to them? Or did they, like many things we do not notice until too late, simply vanish without noise?

My brother, now grown and taller than me, laughs when I ask him. “They’re ducks,” he says, “they manage.” But even he keeps the photograph in his wallet.

When I work with children now – teaching them about the ocean, about corals, about mangroves and waste, I am struck by how their questions are not scientific, but tender. “Do whales get lonely?” one asked. “Can dolphins be sad?” another wanted to know. I give them answers wrapped in facts, but in truth, I think they already know. Just as we did, without words, while sitting by that dam, watching the ducks arrive.

In a world spinning ever faster, the idea of feeding ducks by a dam seems almost quaint. But perhaps we need more of these quiet memories. Perhaps they are the small things that remind us of big responsibilities. Not because they taught us something obvious, but because they gave us a reason to care before we even knew what caring meant.

And perhaps, if we listen closely, if we slow down enough – the ducks are still waiting.

Not just for rice. But for the remembrance.

Ajay Sawant is a marine conservationist and an ocean-climate communicator. He is the founder of Generation Artivism and president of ThinkOcean Society, working to advance ocean conservation through ocean literacy, artivism, ecosystem restoration, and policy advocacy.

We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.

And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.

Read the series here.

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