Wetland Life: Feeding Kolkata’s Fish Fetish
A day with the fishermen of East Kolkata Wetlands
Its half past four a.m. as I drive into the narrow stretch of unpaved mud road off the highway that leads into Bantala, one corner of the vast and interconnected wetlands marked by the hundreds of signature fishing ponds that make up East Kolkata’s Wetlands. I cannot help but notice the stark contrast, even in the semi-dark, between the highway coming off the network of flyovers that I’ve left behind, with its larger than life hoardings offering dizzying images of high rises and skyscrapers and the still, bucolic silence of the wetlands. It is about to rain and the muddy road is still wet from the last downpour that gently soaked the land turning the soil wet and into mush just an hour ago. As the cab lurches into the depths of the wet dirt road, I can hear a rooster squawking in the distance even though it is still pitch dark and at least an hour away from sunrise. There is an all-pervasive smell of raw moist earth wafting in the stillness of the countryside and all it had taken us was a nondescript right turn off a busy polluted highway to fall right into its rustic heart – what is known as the east Kolkata wetlands or the EKW.
The headlight of my taxi-cab illuminates the way for us as we drive in dark between the bheris, or the road connecting the fish ponds, well known locally for the myriad varieties of fresh and hybrid fish that are farmed here. Both water and breeding are all natural here – waters in these ponds are essentially sewage water redirected, also naturally, and organically, into a network of waterways and by gravity as the wetlands are essentially low lying areas on the fringes of Kolkata city they flow into and away from one another to form this cluster of 260 odd ponds. The solid waste of Kolkata’s kitchens that gently flows downward through the city, its urban waste flowing into these low lying marshes on the outskirts lock in over sixty percent of the carbon in the wastewater and soil that would otherwise have piled up in the atmosphere. The wetlands save Kolkata a staggering Rs. 4700 million in sewage treatment costs – India’s seventh most populated city neither has such funds, nor the technology to clean its daily household emissions. For its natural cleansing of nearly half of the 750 million liters of Kolkata’s daily waste water, the East Kolkata Wetland was named a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 2003.
Over a century ago when the sewage water accidentally entered these low lying marshes and silted rivers, it was found by accident that the fish in these ponds multiplied and doubled in quantity. Sewage water, it seems, creates the perfect eco-system for fish farming and production as it enters these low-lying marsh lands via interconnected canals built a century ago by the British allowing for this naturally bio-diverse eco system to thrive on its own while providing Kolkata with over fifty to nearly sixty five per cent of its annual fish demand today. The ponds are also a natural cleansing mechanism for the sewage water en route to the river Kunti as the bacteria and algae become feed for the fish and the plankton multiplies to feed on natural UV rays from the sunlight hitting the shallow waters.
According to scientists who have studied the East Kolkata Wetlands for its biodiversity and natural, self-sustaining ecosystem, the combination of sewage and sunlight is not only magical for plankton, it is also a wholesome treatment for sewage water, the excess of which the Kolkata municipality cannot treat on its own without the support of the wetland ecosystem. The curiously manmade, natural yet urban aquaculture not only treats thirty to forty per cent of the urban sewage naturally, it also provides over eighty percent of total fish production (and fifty per cent of the total green vegetable production) that reaches the fish markets live from where it is further auctioned and distributed earning the contract owners of that bheri their daily income of anything from a few thousand rupees and upwards to twenty five thousand rupees a day. The bheris in total provide a livelihood to over fifty thousand fishermen as well as ten thousand ton of fish to Kolkata’s fish fanatic denizens every year.
This daily ‘pre dawn frenzy’ is not only the fishermens’ main source of livelihood, but forms the essence of what these fish farmers call their culture and eating habits, whether its eating flowers or stems that grow by the bheris, or the way they lightly cook and steam the fish as soon as its caught so that it is as fresh as possible and consumed almost within the hour of being caught. The culture of fishing even informs their dress code, whether it is a chalisa or prayers tied around the arm with a vermilion cotton thread worn around the upper arm – a bunch of fresh tulsi or holy basil leaves tucked neatly in its folds, or their shades of red t-shirts worn with a light cotton lungi that promises to dry off almost as soon as the hundred to near hundred fifty kilograms of the day’s catch has been caught so that these fishermen can clean up all the sweat and tears from the day’s catch in the same bheri water before rushing home with a few pieces of fish to prepare and share with the family for lunch.
The fishermen live in the small clusters of hutments in the villages that surround the wetlands. Their day begins before three a.m. when they move towards the ponds, also in clusters, to start clearing the water hyacinth by hacking or cutting through its rope like formations at the bottom of the bheris and cast the nets after selection which of the three hundred odd bheris will be fished in for the day’s catch. Kolkata being India’s far-east, day break occurs an hour or more ahead of the rest of the country especially the west and south where it would probably qualify as pre dawn hours. So as the rest of the country wakes up to their morning chai, whether at six a.m. or seven, these fishermen have already conducted their day’s major work and the bulk of the supply to feed Kolkata its fish fetish is already well on its way to the city’s markets. It is not uncommon to see the fisherman exiting the bheris at what city folk consider their dawn, brushing their teeth with a broken twig of neem, as they lug their haul of the day’s catch on a bicycle with a aluminum handi that has the capacity to store fifteen – twenty kilos of haul assigned to each fisherman to sell for the day.
Not only is fishing in bheris a culture, it is also a way of life and a way of being a part of the ecosystem here. The eleven odd men fishing this morning are all in their element – smiling, fresh faced and ready for the catch, wading through the murky depths of the ponds, finding the bustling hiding spots of the fish and then cutting the hyacinth around them as they cut their access to safer pastures quickly gheraoing them as they pull the nets deftly surrounding the fish.
Catching fish in the bheri is a community activity that entails elaborate preparation a season or sometimes two seasons ahead, patience and a well planned catch in the darkest hours of the morning when the fish are nesting or asleep in clusters in corners of the pools and least active. The contract owner of each bheri selects the team of fishermen for the day and deploys them a few hours ahead of his own arrival – usually on a separate boat with his personal associates to oversee the operation from a distance. Hours before his silent arrival, the fishermen have entered the waters from a corner to suss out the sleeping fish, slowly and gently casting the nets wherever their feet find some activity in the murky depths of the pond which is never more than a five or six feet deep. A few of the fishermen fan out from another direction lowering their bodies into the water as their hands search for obstacles like reeds and weeds or the thick water hyacinth, cutting them along the way.
The haul on a typical day is never less than a hundred and fifty kilos
From start to finish the whole operation takes not more than an hour or two from casting the nets to the catch. The catching is the most frenzied – as swarms of fish slip away to escape, the fishermen have to be deft and operate both above the water and below to trap them in the nets, positioning the boats strategically to make sure that the load from the nets is directly hauled and dumped on the boats parked in a tight formation.
Fishing frenzy aside, the wetlands are a unique and special part of the environment, naturally containing habitats for higher biological diversity and are one of the most environmentally productive sites. East Kolkata Wetlands provide an entire city’s fish supply and free cleaning of sewage water before it enters the rivers, cleaned naturally by the fish and the aquatic life that thrives and survives in the ponds before these waters go into the Kunti river and eventually, the Arabian Sea.
Today nearly eighty per cent of such eco systems are disappearing or shrinking because of urban construction and real estate encroachment. A city like Chennai had close to 650 wetland marshes and today barely has 27 – a big reason for its recent water crisis, The water levels are also shrinking in Kolkata’s bheris as the waste water being released into the wetlands has been reduced considerably, being released instead directly into the sea.
Job done, the fishermen leave on their bicycles one by the one, each carrying their prize catch in dekchis that can store upto twenty five kilos for sale at the nearest market earning them their daily wage of a few thousand rupees
The 750 metre walk leading into the bheris is navigated on foot with ease by the fishermen who never wear footwear, effortlessly gliding across the marshy soil with their clay coated feet.
Their morning work done, the fishermen leave for the day to allow the stirred water in the ponds to settle before the next day’s frenzy. Navigating the marshy, muddy earth on foot is in itself is a feat especially when it has rained and the mud is like wet slippery clay. But the fishermen don’t need footwear to walk lithely across these internecine pathways that connect the ponds, and glide over them with ease. For a city dweller like me, it takes a little over an hour to slither on my haunches, as though riding an imaginary toboggan, my sneakers uselessly strung by their laces around my neck although I still manage to lose my grip a few times, sliding over stretches of mud, my denims a shade brown and heavy with wet mud.
EXTRAS
Threads tied with a morning prayer and a hope for their life-sustaining daily catch
A fisherman plucks this flower to take home to eat. Such flowers are eaten, their stem is lightly cooked in mustard oil.