Sweet Water, Silvery Ilish
Parimal Bhattacharya This is a translation from Abdul Jabbar’s Banglar Chalchitra, a collection of vignettes that capture the sights and sounds of south Bengal, its people and places, the dialects and daily rituals. ————————– O if I were a bird I’d take you to some other land. Loving you My bones have turned black. Late on a monsoon night, the sky pours in fierce torrents. Boatman Kalimuddi bursts into a raucous song as he lowers the hilsa net. A big tidal bore now rages upon the river like a herd of foamy-mouthed bulls. Kanai and Yaar Ali, his two mates, begin to dance with raised arms and swaying hips. They have just finished a six litre pot of toddy. Strong and frothy, it started to work as soon as it hit the belly. Now the stormy wind whiplash across their bare chests. Earlier, the cold had made them numb. They had called Kashem Ali on a nearby boat for liquor. By Allah, Kalimuddi uncle, not even a glass of it! Kashem had said. We’re smoking ganja to beat the cold. This fucking wind is too sharp. Everybody knows Kashem has hooch stowed away in his boat’s hull. Molasses fermented with calcium carbide and distilled hastily, for fear of the police, gives a clear hard liquor that burns down the throat. Toddy is much better. It is white as milk and soothing to the eyes. Kalimuddi checks the end of the net and feels the powerful tugs. Will they tear it off? He has weighed the net down with twenty-two bricks and has tied on top countless pieces of bamboo as floats. Altogether eighteen boats have dropped nets at Gadakhali. There are others at Raipur – quite a few ‘Rais’ or sluts do live there! – and also on Boatman Punte’s Whirl. The monsoon month has peaked and yet not much water in the skies. Schools of hilsa have suddenly arrived from the sea. Snow has melted in the mountains, discharging sweet red water. The fish are rushing into the river like crazy arrows madly labouring to release eggs. Yesterday Kalimuddi and his mates could get ten hilsas. The rain tonight promises more. They had sold the catch at the wholesale price of eight rupees a kilo. The wholesellers, in turn, had asked ten rupees. At one-and-half kilos each, it works out to fifteen rupees per fish: quite steep for poor people. Dariyar paanch peer badar badar! Hail to thee, five saints of the river! Everyone repeats the cry with raised arms. The tidal bore is here. Waves high as mountains toss the boats about like petals of banana flowers. The boatmen hold the paddle firmly against the heaving water. The thick wire tied at the end of the dragnet sends out a grating noise. Kalim uncle, we shouldn’t have dropped this fucking dragnet tonight – Kanai says. It seems a dolphin has got caught. D’you hear the noise? May be it’s timber from a shipwreck, Kalimuddi says. That’ll rip the net off. The mahajan will be furious, Kanai replies. Lightning flashes every now and then. The nets will be pulled up when the low tide begins. That would be around two in the morning. A knot of men and women are waiting at the riverbank, their lanterns twinkling in the dark. They are the wholesellers. They sit huddled under umbrellas and waterproofing, near the bushes of cacti and prickly pears. A weak rain dribbles from clots of cloud that drift in from nowhere and waste away. Everywhere one hears the rumble and gurgle of waters. At Boatman Punte’s Whirl, hyacinths, bits of straw, wood, broken canisters and other rubbish eddy about and are sucked in. Punte’s boat had sunk in that whirl. A hazardous spot. But a group of fishermen’s daughters have gathered there, catching topse, bhola, prawn, pangas and other varieties with their crude cloth nets. A few anglers have also gathered there. Red warning lamps flash on the floating buoys. A ship had once got stuck there on a sandbar. It had been a windfall for Kalimuddi and his mates. They had salvaged a lot of goods like timber, jars, drums, wheat, coal, liquor bottles and trunks. About fifty fishing boats lie in wait at the Bamboo-grove Ghat. They never ferry or catch fish. They sail towards the sea during low tide and collect contraband goods from ships. Occasionally, they do ferry night travelers across the river, but for fat sums. Some also carry kidnapped women. A ferryboat takes hours to cross the river from Anchipur to Uluberia. That is why, after the fishing season ends, Kalimuddi takes his two eight and ten-year-olds brats on the ferry line. He has to pay to the lessee of the service. For the government, leasing out the ferry ghats is a profitable business that involve investment. There must be shoals of fish towards Gadakhali-Naldanri, it seems! Kashem shouts. That’s why they have cast nets there. Bullshit! Kalimuddi replies. The river is deeper here, about fifteen fathoms. Do the fish dive across the sandbars, you bugger’s son? Kanai joins in. Whatever you get, it’ll go into the mahajan’s belly, he says. Five to seven hundred rupees worth of loans is there in the record book he keeps in his grocery. The boat and the net are his. One portion for the net, one-and-half for the boat, one for the boatman and one for the oarsman. It works out to two-and-a-half portion. In real terms he’ll divide the catch into five portions and take three of them. That means twelve fish for him. Of the remaining eight, the boatman will get four and the oarsmen two each. The wholesale price being eight rupees, a one-and-a-half kilo fish brings only twelve rupees. Twenty-four rupees for two. The mahajan will work up a temper and say –