A seafood platter from the traditional fisherman

This may be difficult for some, but there’s no harm in attempting to picture Goa of the 1970s and perhaps up to the mid 1980s. Not every house had a refrigerator then, some villages were not even electrified in the 1970s, so the man of the house, on waking up every morning would have an important chore, which was to walk to the local fish market, buy just enough of the fresh catch for the family for the day and bring it back. Buying fish was an art, and the man would have been coached by his mother or wife to bargain with the fisherwoman to bring down the price and walk around the market at least twice checking out every portion of fish on sale, before making his pick and returning home. He then would leave for work. 

Later in the morning, the lady of the house would sit cleaning the fish, feeding the heads to the cat that sat before her, waiting for the fishy treat. By mid-morning, she would call out to the neighbour across the low boundary wall to learn what fish the other would be having for lunch that day and discuss the price. It was important to know whether her husband or son had been cheated by the fisherwoman who sold the fish to him. Sometimes, not often, a fisherwoman would go around the village calling out the fish varieties she had for sale in her cane basket. There were no plastic tubs at that time, and no men on two-wheelers tooting their horns to draw the attention of their customers. The fisherwomen walked kilometres with baskets on their heads, the sun burning down hardly a deterrent to them or to the freshness of the fish.

Then came the changes – in the fishing industry and in the people – and fish slowly dropped out of the conversation, though not from the table, as cable television brought other topics of discussion. Fish still remained the staple diet, but the availability increased. Varieties that were seasonal earlier, were now available all year round. They were purchased from the market and frozen at home, defrosted and prepared in a variety of ways, wolfed down at lunch and dinner, and the availability of fish was taken for granted, nobody cared to know where it came from.

Return to the present. Fish is once again the topic of conversation among Goans. It started some weeks ago, when the use of formalin to preserve fish that was imported into the State first cropped up, and though the authorities have been keeping silent on this issue, the people have not stopped talking about it. They’ve discussed the harmful effects of formalin, and whether there has been a cover-up by the authorities. Everybody has had his opinion, and has aired it and it appears to be overwhelmingly leaning towards the belief that formalin, or some chemical, was definitely used to keep the fish fresh and fool the buyers. And as the weeks have gone by the conversations have taken a different turn.

In today’s Goa, you may not see the ladies of the house who will be calling out across the boundary walls and discussing the price and freshness of the fish. The art of conversation has changed. Instead people are clicking pictures of the fish they have bought and sending the pictures to friends, neighbours, relatives in India and abroad, and even posting it on social media websites for all in the friend list to see. There are pictures of fish bought from the fisherman, pictures of fish cooked and set on the table for the meal, pictures of fish being sold along the roadside, pictures of fish caught in the nets of the traditional fishermen, pictures of local men and women helping the fishermen pull in their nets, pictures of thousands of fish covering the sands of the beach – it’s pictures of fish from every angle and in every situation possible. If the fish could be asked to pose for the picture, perhaps they would be. And the captions of the pictures always assert that the fish in the photograph is free of formalin.

Ironically, the very people who would have paid scant attention to the woes of the traditional fishermen, who would probably not even be aware of the battles that the ramponnkars fought in the late 1970s when mechanisation threatened their livelihoods, who would care little to learn of how early the fishermen are up and in the sea for their catch, are now seeking out the ramponnkars and their fish to set upon the dinner table.

It’s not as if the traditional fishermen are unloading their catch on the beaches of Goa only in recent weeks. It is not as if their boats have not been beached on the shores of Goa all these years. It is not as if their fish has not been fresh in the past few years. All this had been ignored. For who cared? It is only now that the people are beginning to weight the advantages of buying fish that has been locally caught over purchasing the fish from the market. It is also only now that the people have realised that the heaps of fish that can be seen in the markets do not all come from the Goan trawlers but much of it is imported from other States. It took the scare of fish being laced with chemicals to awaken the Goan fish consumer.

In the last few years, did anyone pause for a moment to wonder how kingfish was available all year round? Or how mackerels came to be found for sale in the market in huge quantities on any given day? What happened to the seasonality of the fish? With no questions asked, the people just purchased what was available in the market, paying the price demanded and asking no questions in return. Until July this year, when the formalin scare nudged the Goan fish eater from his somnambulant fish stupour. 

Here’s the chance for Goa’s ramponnkar to return to the centrestage, to ensure that his burdens are now focused upon, as at the moment he has the Goan fish eater on his side. There was a video shared recently on social media of a huge fish catch in Benaulim and the person in it saying there is no need of fish imports. While that last part may be debatable, is the ramponnkar who has everybody’s sympathy at the moment grabbing this opportunity with both hands to get his plight understood and his demands met? If he isn’t, he should definitely consider doing so.