This book is one gastronomic delight for
fish-eaters …
Even a sort of antiseptic fish-eater like
me couldn’t keep myself from imagining and dreaming about eating some of the
fish dishes that Samanth Subramanian talks about and eats with gusto in this
wonderful travel book … all right, not everything in this book about ‘eating’
fish … but everything is actually about ‘fish’ … fishing, fish medicine, angling,
fishing communities, fishing-boat building, and fish eating …
Samanth Subramanian starts chasing fish
from Kolkata, with, Hilsa or Ilish … this first chapter is reserved for finding
and eating ilish at various places in Kolkata … and in between mouthfuls of ilish and bhaath
and plucking out bones, there are opinions and discussions about the relative
merits of ilish from both sides of the border … the best way to eat it … how to
pick your way through those exasperating bones … of course, true blue Bengalis
might find other bones to pick in Subramanian’s narrative considering the
reverence with which they hold ilish … ilish is almost a parallel religion in
Bengal …
From Kolkata, Subramanian travels down
the east coast, and comes inland to Hyderabad … and from all that epicurean
delights of Ilish-ian Kolkata, we suddenly come to just the ‘curean’ … the ‘fish
cure’ medicine that is made and distributed to people suffering from Asthma …
this is an annual sort of event that used to be a small affair until the
government started bestowing its patronage … and it became a kind of mela ... Subramanian
documents all these in a very interesting anecdotal manner and even eats the
live fish stuffed with the medicine … I have been living in Hyderabad for the
last twenty years and reading about this ‘fish medicine’ thing, but this was
the first time I read something so comprehensive about this day in the life of Hyderabad
… very lively narrative …
Further down the coast travels Subramanian
and comes to Tamil Nadu … here goes to Manapadu and meets and talks to the
members of the fisherman community called the Paravas … gives us a history of
this community from their early days to their conversio to Christianity and
their current syncretic customs and traditions …
From Tamil Nadu, we turn the corner and
land in Kerala … aah … in and around Tiruvananthapuram … and the narrative also
takes a turn, and returns to the delights of fish eating, along with some
spiritual stuff too … this episode is like a detour into a well-hidden
subterranean parallel stream … this is a stream only the initiates would know …
Subramanian takes us on a tour of toddy shops and introduces us to such
toddy-shop fish delights as kappa-meen curry … oohhhh … karimeen … mussels …
yeah … and we have a spiritual Subramanian who discusses the merits of various
kinds of toddy and toddy-shop food … and of course, the discussion also veers
towards the fishing business, fishermen, etc … all in all, an enjoyable auto
ride …
Next stop, Mangalore … moving up the west
coast … though Mangalore is my ‘native place,’ I didn’t know such eating places
as described and visited by Subramanian existed there … anyway, then I had
neither money nor freedom … what is the best part of the Mangalore episode? The last part … where Mr Vasudev Boloor’s
brother’s son’s wife, Shailaja cooks a mackerel fish curry … in a masala made of
35 to 40 dried red chillies … ‘sinus-clearing’ dish, says Subramanian … right
from washing and descaling to serving, the whole episode is mouthwatering … the
entire book is worth it for this piece alone …
Further up the west coast … Goa … and
then … Mumbai … the Goa episode reminds you of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea … it is a wonderful description of Danny
Moses’ chasing the elusive sailfish, the fastest fish in the ocean … he almost
gets it once, but it got away after a sort of ‘epic’ struggle … and the chapter
goes on to talk about the angling, that gentle Goan ‘activity’ … it is about
the pleasure of the act itself rather than what you catch … but things are
changing in Goa and construction activity has put a spoke in the wheel of this
activity … there is languor in angling … and poignancy in the description that it
may not continue for long …
Last but one stop is Mumbai … Subramanian
wants to eat fish as the city once ate and goes looking for fish dishes among
the fisher-folk of Mumbai, the members of the Koli community … he eats a fish
meal in a typical ‘khanawal’ lunch home called Ananthashram and that leads on
to a question about the specificities of the Gomantak and Malvani cuisines … and
Subramanian was advised to eat his way around Mumbai and find out … and he does
that and eats various kinds of fish cooked in various styles … and finally at a
small eatery in Mahim, the proprietress, gives him an ‘angry’ (because he
wondered whether the food was Gomantak or Malvani!!) master class in Gomantak
cuisine, and shows him how it is different from Malvani cuisine … he tries in
vain to find an ‘authentic’ Koli restaurant, but ended up going to two fake
places and decides that he would ‘shamelessly
abuse someone’s hospitality and invite oneself’ … he meets Gobind Patil, and
Gobind Patil cooks him a Koli meal … and what a meal!! Read it to find out … or better, if you get a
chance, eat and find out …
It is but geographical that Subramanian’s
last chapter is located in Gujarat … he makes a neat V, starting from Kolakata,
coming down the east coast, turning at the bottom of the V, and going up the
west coast, and ending the narrative in Gujarat … he takes us to Veraval and
Mangrol, two of Gujarat’s ship building cities … a completely different
perspective to ‘fish’ actually … the going out and bringing in of fish and how effectively
and efficiently it can be done … when we are relishing these wonderful fish dishes
along the coast, we only concentrate on what is there in front of us on the
plate … not how it got there, who brought it in, and the other logistics of the
whole enterprise … it is sobering to know that the people in Veraval and
Mangrol take pains to make that perfect fishing vessel and take pride in doing
a job well … that brings fish to plate …
Well … here we are … at the end of
Finding Fish … a lively and informative travel book with a strong theme … a
book that is ‘delicious,’ witty, poignant, suffused with history, and written
with an eye for detail … and ear for nuance … and these two, detail and nuance,
are best seen in a sort of ‘surreal’ exchange between a pony-tailed middle-aged
man in jeans and t-shirt and a gray-bearded Sikh in a baseball cap in
Anantashram, an old ‘khanawal’ in Mumbai (Pp. 139-140) …
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