Fishing for joy
📍Khandad, Maharashtra, India (Issue 187)
The Vashishti, the Jaigad, the Kajali and the Muchkundi rivers all pour from the Western Ghats mountains into the sea. They, with many others, dissect the hundreds of kilometres of wide white beaches which stretch from Kerala to Mumbai. When I can, I take a ferry over the rivers. The ferries cross hourly, loaded with tractors, two-wheelers (motorbikes), and me. At other times, bridges span the banks. Sometimes, when I'm unlucky, the old ferry has been replaced by a newer bridge, only for the bridge to crumble and collapse. Now those closed bridges host a small 'road shut' sign in indefinite anticipation of repair. In these final and always disappointing cases I'm forced dozens of kilometres inland back to that haunted National Highway 66.
With that said, one morning last week I was lucky: the air was clear and cool, and the roads were unhampered. I followed the coast towards Jaitapur Bridge, which passes over the broad estuary of the Arjuna River.
It was early, and nature was waking herself up: a shouted chorus of 'chuik chuik chuik', 'cooocooocoooo', 'pawehee pawehee'. It's a delicate and beautiful scene, too, with the yellow-beaked Common Myna sat proud, beak high, or the Indian Peafowl — that national bird of India, regal with vibrancy — and the Red-vented Bulbul and the cuckoo-like Asian Koal. Supporting them, the Bonnet Macaque monkeys remained hidden, somewhere high above me, croaking out their ominous and low-pitched "hoo hoo… hoo hoo… hoo hoo". It's not easy to paint the soundscape of those morning hours; they are so crowded with life and inexplicable. But I'm always happy to be immersed in golden dawn hour as I ride under its lively canopy.
In the middle of the three-hundred-metre Jaitapur Bridge, two men were fishing with one rod: Dhruva and his quiet friend.
I kicked down my stand and grinned, and we stood for a moment in empty silence. It was silent because we were limited by language, far away from the forest sounds of the river bank, and well before rush hour. We were the only ones on Jaitapur Bridge, and, aside from the three of us, the only other man I could see was mending his fishing net in his dark wooden rowing boat, which floated unmoving in the centre of the creek.
Dhruva was eating some white loaf with an omelette his wife had made. I joined him. The sun was not yet visible, and the sky was a simple bright white, not yet transformed into its chemical midday blue. The estuary was still as ice.
"Have you jumped?" I asked, looking down, and Dhruva dropped a chunk of white loaf. One… two… three… four… five. It landed. We were very high. "No," he said. From where the bread had landed, we watched the gentle ripple of waves circle outwards. Then, from the deep black water, rising from under the bread, half a dozen sizeable silvered fish surfaced and eyed the dough — a gift, they presumed, from God. The biggest of them confidently nibbled and, with one swift tail motion, faded away, carrying the bread into the gloom of the river.
Dhruva had only caught one fish that morning, a small Mangrove Red Snapper. Its dark brown body hung listlessly between Dhruva's thick fingers when he showed me with no pride, "Too much small", he said. We returned to silence and shared more bread.
Presently, the rod began to kick and fight and wobble. "I think you've caught something," I said. Dhruva took to the line and talked rapidly with excitement through his mouthful of bread, breathing heavily. I couldn't understand. Winding the line, he began to heave and pull the catch from the base of the bridge.
A mighty Talipia! It was not a whale, no, but Dhruva was as excited as Ahab. His eyes had that wild-glossy look of when one animal dominates another, or perhaps like a winning gladiator might. I was also thrilled. The Talipa was ten inches long and shimmering grey-pink. While it flapped around on the tarmac of the bridge, flinging itself in search of the freshwater fifteen metres below, we took pictures and celebrated. No common language was needed because experiences like this go beyond words. Dhruva called his wife to flaunt his success.
I said goodbye. A moment later, I was in the forest, far from the creek, far from the thrill of the catch. I thought of how many joyful moments are happening in this moment, right now, and how many we miss. I thought of how much joy I miss when I keep my head down, closing myself to the world, dwelling on an uphill or saddle sore. How many beautiful moments do we cycle straight past in life? They are fleeting! Unnoticed and unappreciated, we waste them like letting apples rot in an orchard.
