FRIENDS OF THE SEA...

My mother-in-law is very fond of fish curry and so is my daughter. A lunch without fish is ho hum for them. Not that others in the family can survive on greens for three days at a stretch. But these days, with adulterated fish in abundance, she is a bit anxious of buying them. The disillusioned family is running more on vegetables these days. 

Jennet comes from the beach side to the city every day to sell fish. She has been coming with her mother since the age of 8. She had started selling fish at our house when my mother-in-law was only a young bride and just beginning to try her hands in cooking. Jennet is however crestfallen that Amma doesn't buy from her like old times. And Amma is apprehensive of a time when the likes of Jennet will stop bringing fish and it will be entirely chemical-dipped.

She calls Jennet `vellachi'. In fact she calls every fisher-women the same. She remembers a time when the junction nearby our house used to be lined up by fisher women, both mornings and evenings. ``There was one woman who we used to call `pathira vellachi.' She used to sell fish till midnight,'' Amma recalls. Pathira meaning midnight. 

``But there aren't enough men going to sea nowadays. Then how will they bring fish two times a day?'' Amma frets. Jennet is the only one in her family who travels to city every day with the huge aluminium vessel perched on her head. Her son was given a job by the Airport Authority when the expansion of the airport happened. He is in Mumbai now. Her husband no longer goes to sea. 

Jennet says boys of her son's age are leaving homes looking for safer jobs and more `decent' jobs. ``They don't like to smell of fish,'' she says. Maybe in ten years, you will get to buy fish from fish markets only that too brought in by machine boats. It will be more expensive, she pokes my mother-in-law.

 Amma knows which fish is available during which season and which goes under cover to breed. After Onam, it is the season for mackerel (ayala), horse mackerel (kozhiyala) and wallago (vaala) mainly. She is very fond of wallago or knife fish as it is called, but it is now rated Rs 400 for one. 

``We used to buy it for Rs 10,'' she reminisces. I tell her that she should have eaten and done with her liking for it, then itself. But seeing her long face, I tell her ``let's take the risk Amma. Vegetables are also chemical-washed. Then why dump fish alone.''

Amma is not confident of her quality checking methods anymore. ``These people apply red dye to the fish gills to make them appear fresh. Only when I get the aroma I can make out now,'' she says. 

Finally, as always, we end up buying fish. One more to the heap of chemicals we push into the body daily. Like a true lover, she declares, ``let me eat fish and die then.''