Global Citizen II

The whale shark has sailed close to home, and having heard of Aristotle and his letters decided to pitch in with one himself.

WHALE SHARK

Hiya mates!

I kinda like this mailbag stuff, like you can write letters and stuff like that to tell everybody your ideas, like what you are thinking. It is really cool stuff.

I am another global citizen for ya! Hope you get my lingo, eh? I travel a lot, like to Australia, Mauritius, India and places like that. I kind of mix words and slang of different countries I go to. I kind of hope you understand.

The donkey everyone knows is a wally but like I am surprised these turtle fossils are yabbers! Do they talk!

From the blue

Myself a whale shark. Not a whale but a shark. Like they call me whale shark for my size, understand

— motu chhe ,

barobar ? I am the largest fish in the world, like maybe 50-ft long. My skin is sort of greyish with cream-coloured stripes and dots and stuff like that. I don’t have stripes like a zebra or a tiger. Like, it is sort of more like at random. This design helps to camouflage, hide and do stuff like that. I breathe through some stuff called gills but many times I kinda swim at the surface of water. You seen me? I swim with my chops wide open, maybe like 1-m wide. You know why I do that? I catch plankton, krill and small fish with something like strainers in my mouth when water rushes through. Neat trick, eh? Hog as you go along!

My rellies are the great whites. Scared ya! Do I have teeth like ‘em? Ya, ya like 3000 ivories maybe. But I don’t attack people or scare ‘em or do stuff like that. I am kinda gentle. You know why? After I choof off from the reefs of Western Australia, I, along with my tribe, head for Porbandar on Gujarat’s western coast. That is the birthplace of the great man, you know, Mahatma Gandhi! We too believe in non-violence, peace and stuff like that.

Sadly, here fishermen kill us. They are not Mahatmas; we are not sacred cows, right?. When they see us like between March and May, they throw a hook like thing at us, to injure us, and they keep us afloat with big empty drum like things tied with ropes to our bodies. The fisher folk get a lakh of rupees or something for each one of us. The Government of India said ‘ bus karo ’ and they have banned whale shark hunting. Now our young ones are born here, you know (for us no anda business), in safe waters.

Then off again, thousands of Ks to back of Bourke and places like that!

Sukhriya!

Avjo !

Cheers mate!

Whale shark

Reply from Aristotle

The letters are getting weirder by the day! What will they come up with next?