Mitali talks about fishing, replete with wit and humour. An exclusive for Different Truths.
How do I fish? Let me count the ways. I love to fish to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. (With due apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning1)
Fishing is an activity that has always fascinated me.
After reading Huck Finn2, I realised the best way to meditate would be while fishing. You would put the bait in water and wait. Wait. Wait for the fish to bite. And when they bite, you would drag him or her (fishes have males and females) out and then roast them on slow fire! Or fry the creature, as my father would have recommended, in hot mustard oil after marinating it with salt and a smear of turmeric — typical Bengali cuisine!
… the hotel staff was ordered to fry fish in mustard oil in front of the guests and serve it fresh!
He even had that implemented at a family wedding in an air-conditioned hall without cooking or special exhaust facilities. As he was given responsibility for the menu, he wanted the very best for his beloved niece. So, the hotel staff was ordered to fry fish in mustard oil in front of the guests and serve it fresh! That the guests had to put up with gusts of smoke indoors and had streaming red eyes provided fodder for humour and very importantly, also served to imprint the wedding dinner in the minds of all the attendees. But we are not indulging in a discussion of wedding memorabilia or culinary recipes. We want to focus on fishing experiences!
In front of my house now, there is a river or a sea inlet — in Singapore most rivers are sea inlets. Now it is a freshwater reserve. They dammed the sea to collect rainwater — we have a few of them on the island. These collect not just rainwater but run offs too. I do not want to go into the water systems of Singapore but what I mean to say is, people fish there too.
They stand with lines and the river is literally teeming with piscine life, turtles, and otters.
They stand with lines and the river is literally teeming with piscine life, turtles, and otters. Sometimes you see the otters munch a whole fish. They just catch the fish with bare hands, rather paws, and have it uncooked, unsalted swimming in the river. You can hear the bones crackle as they bite. I watch some of them at play. They dive and disappear into the greenery on the opposite shore. They reappear again this time near their friends who are munching on fish. Their whiskers quiver when they eat. The latecomers try to grab the fish from him/her. The munching otters push them off and dive. The hungry bunch follows. Sometimes, the otters fight over the fish! Kingfishers and cranes too, dive down to fish. I do not know if the Brahmani kites ever eat fish, or do they soar high to looking for mice or moles? Rodents scare me. But again, I remind myself, we were talking about fishing.
The monkeys I do not think fish. But they do occasionally swim in condominium swimming pools lining the river — like humans they prefer the privacy of clean chlorinated water to river water where monitor lizards, snakes, otters, turtles, fish live and eat. They once went into a home with open windows after a swim in an empty pool in the middle of a tall stack of flats and munched on bananas on the table!
I have an uncle, who I believe went fishing and he took lines and baits…
No. They definitely do not fish. But humans fish in the oddest places and postures. Sometimes, I have seen them leave their lines embedded in the sand by the sea or at an angle pitched on the shore, while they sit nearby chatting with their friends or families. I have an uncle, who I believe went fishing and he took lines and baits and wore a fisherman’s cap. He went, he fished, he returned home — except there were no fishes that rose to his bait!
My belief is that fishes like humans are getting smarter as they evolve. While frogs continue to serenade me even in Singapore for cooking lettuce for tadpoles in China3 — that is another story where my sons told me to boil lettuce for ten minutes for the squiggly creatures they had adopted — fishes never react. Or maybe, they have a grudge against me because I was part of a fishing crew!
They would go there and catch fish and eat and relax over the summer.
Long ago, while attending a summer school in Oslo University, I was invited by one of my father’s local friends to Fevik4, a beautiful seaside town in Norway where people keep summer homes. At least, my father’s friend did. They would go there and catch fish and eat and relax over the summer. They had a toilet with a long drop that catered to all the residents of their summer cabin. Brought up with plumbing in India’s multi-layered society where homes like ours had multiple bathrooms in marble, I found living with a shared common long drop tough! But they were very kind and made the most of my quick one-night sojourn.
They took me fishing. It was on a motorised boat that whirred out into the open waters. They first laid a net near their home. Then we went out further. As I loved the breeze blowing into my face, I watched them throw a line. At that point, I was asked would I like to try my hand at fishing? Of course, I would. I would never let an opportunity for a new adventure, non-culinary or culinary, slip by, especially in my early twenties.
The fish I had caught, I thought, was enormous!
So, I was handed a line and asked to throw it and I did with all my might. I felt a tug. Beginner’s luck? That is what you would think. That’s what I thought — what a superb fisherwoman I was — a superwoman. The boat began to sway as if it would topple. The fish I had caught, I thought, was enormous! And then they said since I could not manage to get the fish and the boat was swaying, they would take the line. They took it from my hand and, lo and behold, said it was not a fish!
What could it be? They declared the line and hook stuck between rocks. With a lot of manoeuvring, they managed to free the line as far as I remember, or did they abort the attempt by cutting the string lose? I have forgotten — it was three decades ago. But I do remember the taste of crabs from the net was fabulous.
To travel, explore the world has always been a dream…
I had never eaten a crab in landlocked Delhi till then. When I look back, I realise how much I did not know or savour and therefore never really missed while growing up in New Delhi. To travel, explore the world has always been a dream that I had and to write about what I saw.
In a way, I have been fishing all my life — fishing for new things, discovering the hidden nooks and crannies in this wonderful universe and now, I fish, fish for a fabulous future in the pages of books and also while walking, talking, breathing, and traveling! You have to admit, I am not a bad fisherwoman — I catch much in my net and lines — everything except piscine creatures that inconveniently swim away in water.
References
1https://poets.org/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43
2 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm
3 https://www.differenttruths.com/humour/chapter-1-globalisation-in-our-backyard/
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fevik
Photos by the author and visuals by Different Truths
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