Village by the sea

Arghya Ganguly takes a walk through the narrow lanes of Koliwada to find out what life in Mumbai’s fishing village is like during the forced monsoon holiday

The Bandra-Worli Sea Link offers a delightful sight early morning that stays with you: fishermen from the Koliwada village in fashionable Worli in their boats laden with a catch of marine life — fish, crab, lobster et al. A good haul brings broad smiles on their weather-beaten and leathery faces; long faces mean the fish escaped their nets. But this is a seasonal treat. During monsoon, you will not see trawlers dancing in the Arabian Sea. Instead, you will notice from the cable-stayed bridge empty, anchored boats in the triangle-shaped village that looks as if it was drawn by a child without a scale, in which houses almost fall upon one another, jostling for breathing space.

 

Once you walk into the narrow lanes of this understandably smelly village, you bump into more and more low-spirited and aged fishermen, wearing their three-quarters pants and cotton shirts, either going to the tavern or returning from it. The mood on an overcast afternoon at the village is sombre, and in no time you figure out why: Kolis are put off by this inevitable and annual time off. With the Coast Guard announcing the beginning of the monsoon season, when it is dangerous to venture into the sea, the Kolis, the original fisher-folk inhabitants of Mumbai, will spend the next couple of months indoors, “leading a dull drudgery of a life”, mending their nets, sails, boats and their own health – the aspect that this adventurist tribe ignores most.

Over the years, a number of medical clinics have been constructed in the area which houses around 500 residents. But conservative Kolis don’t believe much in a trained physician. In case of emergency, some of them are still known to summon either the devta (family deity) or the Hindu vaid — this in the heart of cosmopolitan Mumbai that recently dreamt of rivalling Shanghai. Every Koli house comprises an oti (verandah) which is reserved for weaving nets. Though patterns differ, every house has a chool (kitchen), a vathan (living room), a detached bathroom and a devghar (worship room).

An average Koli’s devghar is usually choc-a-bloc with images of gods, and photographs of corpses — in fact, you will seldom find photographs of the living in their homes. When a family member dies, his corpse is dressed up in new clothes, placed on a chair, preferably in the one where he spent his last years introspecting and “ordering people around”, and “asked to smile one last time”. “My father was always camera-shy. Even after his death, he acted so stubborn when we had to click (sic) him,” says a Koli woman with a twinkle in her eye. The humour belies the fact that a Koli woman’s life is perhaps more difficult than her husband’s. Her day usually begins at 3 am with spinning, followed by cooking, before she leaves on a truck or the local train to go to a market to sell the catch of the day. The Koli men in a way show their appreciation for their women by paying the bride price instead of taking a dowry.

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Some of the fishermen have two to three boats and earn up to Rs 70,000 per month. They own Scorpios (five years ago, well-off fishermen were fascinated with the Tata Sumo) which are parked outside the village, near the Worli bus stand, since there’s no space inside. In the same houses, you will find plasma TVs. But not all fishermen are well-off. The poorer ones earn between Rs 6,000 and Rs 10,000, while still others lead a hand-to-mouth existence working as carpenters, plumbers or labourers in nearby construction sites. Workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who migrated in the 1990s, usually reside in huts and thus use the BMC-built toilets inside the village which has semi-modern drainage system. Social hierarchy in the village recedes into the distance only during the Narali Purnima when every Koli worth his salt offers a coconut to the sea before recommencing fishing post-monsoon.

For good or ill, the sons of fishermen don’t relate to most of the unorthodox practices of their parents. Also, they are “damn sure” of not becoming a fisherman. But, they are also unsure of what to become, since chasing or even dreaming about other goals seems too expensive. “Sometimes, it happens that you want to study but you can’t because you’re a mediocre student… you’re not in the top five,” says 18-year-old Anish Dandekar. Only a few meritorious students in the village are given scholarships annually by the local MLA to study further. The ‘mediocre’ students get left behind and the natural progression for them is to sign up for petty jobs or crimes — both of which are plentiful in Mumbai.

Villagers will tell you that brewing illicit liquor and drug peddling exists by pointing their fingers surreptitiously towards a corner at the end of the village but cops dismiss the theory. Cops also deny arresting anyone recently with respect to smuggling. The only report of smuggling was made sometime in the late 1970s when an “unknown boat stacked with diamonds”, which had sailed into the village, was captured by few fishermen. Local folklore has it that these fishermen distributed the diamonds equally among themselves and the cops were never able to recover the precious stones.

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“Villagers are picked up mostly for matka gambling and fist fights. We’ve not had reports of big crimes like smuggling. What happened early this month was an exception,” says Mohan Varadi, a sub-inspector at the Dadar Police Station. In that particular case, four youngsters (of whom three were dropouts from school) and a 44-year-old taxi driver from the village were arrested on charges of raping a minor girl living in the neighbourhood for over a month. All the youngsters, barring one, belong to a fisherman’s family.

The most famous Koli currently is also a fisherman’s son. Baba (name changed) started indulging in petty crimes, like helping his friends with “girl problems”, after he failed his SSC boards. Ruia, Poddar and Kirti College, all located in and around Dadar, come “under his jurisdiction”. “If you’re Baba’s friend and if someone happens to tease your girlfriend, then that person or the gang will get it,” says Akhilesh Kumar, a Ruia College student. Baba is the bhai (the go-to guy) and the muscle of the village, and many youngsters here brag about ‘knowing him’ personally when challenged.

About 500 years ago, before even Vasco da Gama came to India , the nine Patil brothers, the first family to inhabit the hamlet, were the ones who dictated terms here. Sometime afterwards, to improve the dwindling economy of Koliwada, the brothers decided to ‘extend invitations’ to people from other villages. People, who subsequently came, converted and became Kolis. The Kolis came to be broadly divided into Son Kolis (higher caste), Mahadev Kolis (migrants) and Christian Kolis. In 1675, (when the city was made up of seven islands)the British built the Worli Fort, overlooking the Mahim Bay, to ward off pirates.

The Kolis, on their part, have mostly used the fort when they have lost the battle with life. The fort has a “suicide well” where many jilted lovers, debt-ridden fishermen and unemployed youths have jumped to their deaths. The well seemed a better option than the sea because “with all the fishermen around, there was a chance of being rescued”. The “suicide well”, however, is no longer in working condition. With years of neglect by the authorities, along with the crumbling edifice of the fort, the well has become choked with muck.

The fort also houses an illegal gym, built a few months ago. Locals feel the gym has done the Koli society a huge favour by taking the place of illegal liquor brewers and drug peddlers. Looking at the few Koli youths sweating it out in the gym, you wonder whether this generation would’ve jumped to their deaths had the well been still fit for suicide. These fishermen’s sons indeed have learnt to hit back… unfortunately most of the time on the flimsiest of pretexts.