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One day in the life of… Kasimedu fishing harbour

PHOTOS: K.V. Srinivasan

WHERE HOPES ARE ANCHORED Scenes from the fishing harbour

4:30 a.m.: Kasimedu fishing harbour. Everything inside me rattles. There’s a cold wind after the rain and most people, mainly fishermen, are in weathered raincoats and windcheaters and plastic bags upturned to make caps. I cringe as I crunch wo rms under my shoe, but most others are barefooted.

The harbour is waking late today — a rainy Friday. Selling around 1,000 metric tonnes of fish for domestic consumption and another 1,000 MT for exports every day, it is usually up by 3 a.m. “Fridays and Saturdays the city consumes less fish,” says Mahalingam, an executive engineer at the Port Trust, explaining the delay. The Port Trust only broadly oversees the affairs in this neck of the woods. The day-to-day administration is in the hands of the Chennai Fishing Harbour Management Committee (CFHMC). Policies, framed by the Ministry of Fisheries, are implemented by the Committee.

A small crowd has gathered on the auction floor, an open deck near the sea, to purchase the first catch, ferried here by catamarans from mechanised boats. The auction begins and within murmurs and minutes, deals are fixed and baskets whisked away. Meanwhile, other fishermen paddle to the shore and quickly, the auction floor fills once again. Crackling speakers belt out devotional songs, tea vendors cycle in, and shutters on stalls are rolled up.

An aged Subramani waits on the auction floor for deals to be fixed. A fish porter, he earns Rs. 5 for every basket he carries to waiting vehicles. “People from the nearby villages enrol as porters here,” says Arpudam, the president of the North Madras Fisherman’s Association, one of the many associations in the harbour. To join, they need a reference from one of the Association’s members.

In one corner, Kanaka engages in friendly banter with a buyer. Like her, many women do second-sales on the auction floor. They come early, buy the fish and sell at a better price to latecomers. A woman seats herself near Kanaka, grumbling. She has just handed over a basketful of fish to a money lender in one of the sheds that line the harbour. “Some buyers take loans from shop keepers and repay with fish,” explains Mohan, a peon at the Port Trust.

The fishermen are busy and annoyed at my questions. After many fruitless minutes, I decide to take matters head on and go to Arpudam’s office, believing I can bully him into fielding my queries. He is polite, turning a gigantic table fan towards me to keep the swarming flies off my face. But he has the time to answer only a few questions. Come back tomorrow, he urges. He turns to his assistant Padmavathi and asks her to take me around the following morning.

At 9 a.m. the next day, the hawkers who line the lanes leading to the wharfs — selling saris, woollen clothing and food stuffs – are already open for business. So are the shops selling fish, most of them makeshift structures of thatch. These will have to make way shortly for widening a road that runs through it. They will be moved into a permanent structure provided by the Port Trust. None of them have shifted so far. “Only when they allot shops for all of us, will we shift,” says Padmavathi. Today, the fishermen use the area in front of the new shops to sell prawns and dry fish.

We pass ice factories. We walk through an auction house, now used for afternoon siestas and to mend nets. We enter the wharfs. On a mechanised boat, I meet Kuppan, one of the nine employees of the vessel. In turns, six of them go to sea on fishing expeditions which usually last a week. Trawlers go out for 15 days or more; catamarans rarely for more than one. The mechanised boats are forced to venture into the waters off Andhra Pradesh because, “off Tamil Nadu we have little fish,” says Kuppan. “But if we enter ‘their’ waters, the fishermen there confiscate our boats, nets and fish and beat us up.” Mohan recalls having been beaten with an ice hammer. Sundaramurthy was in a ship that was taken into custody by fishermen in Kakinada and kept in “custody” for 23 days.

It is only by 6 p.m. that Kasimedu formally winds up. But activity in this fishing harbour starts to peter out in the late forenoon. At 11 a.m., or around the time my newspaper office starts coming to life, it seems already half-asleep.

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