The Island Of Bitra Is one of the northern most inhabited points in the Lakshadweep archipelago. Azure waters surround beaches of pale yellow sand fringed with coconut and casuarina trees. Underwater, a thriving coral metropolis houses reef fish of every imaginable shape and colour.
One evening around six or seven years ago, Hamsa Koya and his brother, residents of the island, set out to sea to fish. Koya steered a kundalam, a mid-sized fishing boat with an outboard engine, carefully across the shallow waters of the island’s lagoon. He headed for a popular fishing spot that the locals called “furathabam.” Here, where a red buoy marked the lagoon channel, they often fished for chammali, or paddletail snapper, a species that lives in large shoals among nearby coral boulders. Like a few other residents of Bitra, Koya sells his catch for a living. Most others are subsistence fishermen, fishing to feed their families.
That day, Koya rode out a little further, south of the channel, to the outer reef. In these deeper waters, the fishermen were more likely to find large metti, or red snapper, whose meat Bitra’s residents are particularly fond of. They stilled the boat’s engine, lowered an anchor, and fastened hooks to their fishing lines, which had been neatly rolled around flat wooden boards. Then, they spun the hooks over their heads, and hurled them as far as they could into the sea, sending the lines unfurling through the air.
As he waited with his line in the water, Koya noticed something unusual. A swarm of dark brown shapes rose from the depths. Koya thought he recognised the peculiar movements of these fish, with their tails sashaying against the current. But he had never seen so many of them in one place before.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2015 من The Caravan.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2015 من The Caravan.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Mob Mentality
How the Modi government fuels a dangerous vigilantism
RIP TIDES
Shahidul Alam’s exploration of Bangladeshi photography and activism
Trickle-down Effect
Nepal–India tensions have advanced from the diplomatic level to the public sphere
Editor's Pick
ON 23 SEPTEMBER 1950, the diplomat Ralph Bunche, seen here addressing the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first black Nobel laureate, Bunche was awarded the prize for his efforts in ending the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Shades of The Grey
A Pune bakery rejects the rigid binaries of everyday life / Gender
Scorched Hearths
A photographer-nurse recalls the Delhi violence
Licence to Kill
A photojournalist’s account of documenting the Delhi violence
CRIME AND PREJUDICE
The BJP and Delhi Police’s hand in the Delhi violence
Bled Dry
How India exploits health workers
The Bookshelf: The Man Who Learnt To Fly But Could Not Land
This 2013 novel, newly translated, follows the trajectory of its protagonist, KTN Kottoor.