The ones that got away

People Like Them

The rain was coming down in sheets in Lakhanpur that evening, and some villagers had gathered to pass the time of the day by remembering the old days.

Munne Lal peered at me through the thickest pair of spectacles I'd ever seen, and said: "He's talking about dolphins you know. There used to be plenty of dolphins in the Ganges in those days!" Thinking that this was obviously the old chestnut about the fish that got away, I asked how they knew it was a dolphin.

"I'm a Mallah, I know every creature in the Ganges," said Munne Lal indignantly, "and having worked in Calcutta for ten years, I know quite a few salt water fish too!" I asked how he thought marine creatures such as dolphins could be found as far inland as Mirzapur.

"Not just dolphins! Twenty years ago, our nets yielded prawns, hilsa "" even the odd jellyfish once in a while!" The villagers nodded in agreement, and I was sure they were all pulling a fast one on me.

"These fish used to come from the sea beyond Calcutta," another Mallah told me. I smiled disbelievingly and asked, "Why don't you show me some?" "Once the Farakka Barrage was built, the fish stopped coming," said Munne Lal, "but even now, if one is lucky, one can see a dolphin here. And in this season, we still get quite a lot of shrimp in our nets, but they are too small to sell."

"Remember the turtles we brought out from the river?" one of the villagers piped up. "Oh yes," Munne Lal sighed. "Monsters they were "" one almost bit my toe off, but so delicious! And one could get a handsome price for their shell too. It's such a pity that the government has prohibited their killing!"

Listening to their conversation, I realized that fishing, or Ganga ki kheti in village parlance, is every Mallah's favourite pastime, though few eke out a living from it anymore.

"When I used to come for a month's holiday from Calcutta, the first thing I used to do was row off in my boat for a spot of fishing," remembered Munne Lal, a faraway look in his nearly sightless eyes.

"The river was so clean, bursting with fish. It was paradise!" That was the time, Munne Lal said, when many of his brethren actually earned decent money from fishing.

"One could easily find fish that were three to four kilos. There was enough to eat and enough to sell," said he. But things are, unfortunately, very different today.

"The water is so dirty! Perhaps that's why fishes are not growing as big as they used to "" we barely manage a haul of a few half kilo or one kilo fish," said Munne Lal sadly.

The rain was down to a mild drizzle. So we walked to the riverbank, where we met a Mallah coming back with the day's catch.

"What did you catch?" asked Munne Lal. "Nothing much," said he, throwing something into the river, "just some small fish and a handful of jhinga that were too small to be any good!"

We looked at the ever-widening ripples where he'd thrown the prawns, and I realized I'd lost the chance to see at least one creature I'd not believed the Ganges could house.

The prawns, like the proverbial fish, had gotten away "" and all I got to see was the triumphant I-told-you-so expression on Munne Lal's face.