It's a somnolent afternoon on the beach in Taramgapadi village, and the only shady respite from the blazing sun is the fish auction shed. I walk towards it, looking at the fishing boats coming ashore with the day's haul. Fisherwomen wait impatiently in the shed, their empty metal buckets stacked on the floor. Swarms of flies are omnipresent, as is the overpowering smell of yesterday's fish. But it doesn't deter the steadily growing crowd that arrives a couple of hours early every day for a preview of the auction scheduled later in the evening. "Sometimes, there are more than 1,000 people at the auction," says Punita, one of the fisherwomen from the village standing next nearby, "some from as far as Goa and Kerala." |
Amidst a great deal of shouting and excitement, the first boat's contents reach the shed. The women peer in but look away, disgusted. I peep in hesitantly, for if the contents could disgust them, they must be very disgusting indeed. Instead, I see lots of perfectly ordinary small fish. The key lies in their size. Punita tells me, "I buy Rs 5,000 worth of fish every day and travel by local bus four-and-a-half hours to Kumbakonam to sell it. |
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Only poor villagers like us eat this small fish, so it's useless!" A couple more boats came in, and the crowd gets busy examining the catch. "By and large," says Punita, who's appointed herself as my guide, "large fish could fetch as much as Rs 150 a kilo in the wholesale market. Small fish like mackerel go for barely Rs 30." But netting the big ones isn't easy. "One has to go far into the sea to catch big fish. Our little boats usually just get the smaller varieties as they can't go so far." says she. |
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But today is their lucky day, it seems. While we've been examining the fish in the buckets under the shed, a drama is unfolding on the beach. Five men in a small boat are wrestling hard with something in their net. "Look at the way it's thrashing around!" cried one woman, as the creature in the net actually makes the small boat turn in its frantic bid to free itself. From the droop in their shoulders visible even on the beach, it is clear that the men aren't really keen on this sort of excitement at the end of an eight-hour fishing expedition. |
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The crowd begins to look a little frightened as the contest seems to sway in the fish's favour. Then an accurate throw of a harpoon ends the match, and everyone applauds. The boat comes ashore, and the victors emerge with a four-foot-long fish tied to a pole. The fisherwomen sigh. For with that one fish alone, those five men would earn more than a day's wages each. The women prod it with a stick. "See how big it is around the stomach!" says Punita, "my guess is that they'll get more than Rs 1,000 for it." |
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It's a dolphin, I see, with the bloody harpoon in its belly. "Isn't it illegal to kill and trade in dolphins?" I wonder aloud. Punita glares at me: "People like us risk our lives day after day to put fish on your plates. In return, we earn enough to just survive. What's more important, the dolphin's life or our livelihood?" I stare silently at death clouding the dolphin's eyes. Turning away, I see the fisherfolk for whom killing this friendly but endangered mammal means earning that badly-needed extra buck. Not surprisingly, no easy answers spring to mind. |
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