Anthony of the high seas

From a distance it would have looked like the crystal and other jelly fishes had gathered for a surface party in the middle of the night, their unearthly bioluminescence in full swing. There was music even. In place of the emotion-shorn trance and techno, lovelorn songs from Malayalam cinema filled the air. Belted out by All India Radio, staccato broke in rudely now and then but love and longing prevailed. Bobbing around each other in a chain dance were little catamarans and bigger boats.

In the gloaming of the deep sea, the bright LED lights from the boats gleamed all the way down through the pellucid water. Sea creatures, detritus and other flotsam that had floated from the littoral zone silhouetted against the crisscrossing beams, a play in black and white. I leaned over the boat – there were two boats and four catamarans bound together by nets, lights shining from the electric lamps fastened to the gunwales – and gawked at the Reverse Universe that revealed itself from amongst the murk.

Anthony – goes for a lone run

An exercise whose legality is a grey area with ominous fallouts, ‘thattumadi’ is a combination of fishing equipment terms – thattu (rope) and madi (net). This is a cluster of nets held together by ropes and floats that can cover an area of at least half a square kilometre. Not just in the night time, but fishing using this net-rope combo is called ‘thattumadi’. This is generally regarded as an outcome of a bunch of smaller fishermen coming together and rising up to the challenge posed by industry-scale trawlers and the banned but pretty-much-around longliners which kill even what they don’t want to catch with their non-discriminating hooks. What has raised eyebrows is the sustainability of the practice in the night or wee hours. Recreation of daybreak when marine creatures would scamper to the surface for a stretch is believed to rework their biological clocks with long-term ramifications – like breeding patterns for one. Understandably, the fishermen blame the changing climate and the mega port nearby for paucity of catch; thattumadi is a means to their livelihood ends.

Early morning of January 2, 2017, I returned to the shore after a night out at sea where I was privy to an awe-inspiring interplay of skills, bravura and luck. I filmed from the aft as the sturdy sea hands dropped the nets first as the boats formed a huddle. Then they gradually pulled apart, lamps shining bright, to form a circle. After probably an hour, the men began pulling in the nets which brought the boats closer again together but this time the nets rose slowly and fell into the boats, revealing the shiny, jumpy prize. The rustle of death was unforgettable, like a thousand tambourines rattling.

Diagrams by Anthony explaining thattumadi

I had gone aboard this fishing expedition as part of my ambitious #KeralaCoastalWalk by which I aimed to cover by foot the 600 km of the state coastline but eventually which I had to abort as my gout condition flared up grievously following a steady diet of fish and drinking with newfound friends. There were of course other less painful distractions too like murderous dogs and indefinitely pleasurable ones like friendly Russians and the scenic Varkala in season. The fisher folk are a close-knit community who pays any heed, if at all, only to the parish priest and generally shuns the outside world. Getting on this boat was, to put it mildly, a task. Some enterprising lads offered to put up a show for me, a burgher and an outsider, for a ridiculous amount of money. Some others said they didn’t have the time to look for fish and after me – me, who was most likely to puke my guts out once we hit the high seas and then probably shrivel up and dehydrate myself to death.

Enter Anthony Carlos who was introduced to me by the nuns of the convent in Pozhiyoor, the south-most point from where I began my walk. A few words with the boat owner cum group leader out of earshot and I was on. On seeing my enthusiasm, Anthony had earlier visited me in my room in a lodge I was staying in nearby Uchakkada and explained in painstaking detail every aspect of thattumadi, with diagrams. He sat next to me grinning as we headed out while I grimaced as the waves drove jackhammer blows beneath the fibre boat. Several kilometres out, as land dissolved behind a fuggy screen, I could sense his solicitous eyes on me. Everyone listened to him, pulled net when he told to, dropped anchor where he asked to.

Later, during the #KeralaFloods of August 2018, Anthony and I had coordinated efforts to support financially the families of fishermen who were caught up with rescuing stranded people. Being an office bearer of a fishermen association he had access to those who were in genuine need.

Early noon of December 2, 2018, I got the news that Anthony was dead.

With Anthony on the Pozhiyoor beach

If anything that Hemingway’s celebrated ‘The old man and the sea’ tells us, it is the extraordinariness of the most ordinary of professions – fishing. While nobody dies in this classic, everybody does in the cult ‘Chemmeen’ by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai – where the deaths are actually gloated over for the lore and a misogynistic myth which apparently claimed their lives. Along with the lives of fishermen, these two books also opened up ways of dying too – it is indeed a rare fisherman who dies in his sleep, on his bed.

Anthony didn’t die a natural death either.

From Kochi I drove over 200 km to Paruthiyoor, a hop skip from Pozhiyoor, in Trivandrum suburbs. This is a closely packed hamlet that radiated from the chalk white Mary Magdalene church with its towering steeple where the funeral service was on. The entire village and surrounding area had congregated here; it was a time of unmitigated grief. Aligned in intense sadness, it was a wracking gallery of teary eyes and hunched shoulders. Consolation wasn’t on offer much as everyone was in disbelief still coming to terms with the sudden departure. A few faces I recognised and a few recognised me; among them were the nuns of the convent where I met Anthony. There were family and friends with whom I had interacted very closely. Their faces were of extreme grief – it was frightening as well as unsettling to look at them directly. Anthony was a popular man not just for the office he held but that was just how he was.

The hamlet radiates from the church

That morning two years ago before I returned from the thattumadi, I had purchased a seer fish from the crew which I intended to give as a gift to the nuns in the convent. I took it from the boat and walked holding it by its tail followed by cats, dogs and some kids who tried to coax out of me my watch, sunglasses and pen. The fish they didn’t care for much – which the dogs kept yelping and snapping at. The cats tried to seduce me with their arced spines against my shin. It was no easy going. Finally when I reached the convent the nuns were happy and the mother superior suggested that I could now get married as I was adept at selecting good fish. When I confessed that it was Anthony who helped me pick it they looked at each other quizzically.

The mother superior told me that Anthony never went on group expeditions but always by himself in his own outboard.

God bless him, she said. 

After the funeral, I repaired to the convent with the nuns and some members of Anthony’s family. Among the reasons that came up for his death from high blood pressure, the most plausible one was the considerable incidence of salt in the diet. Dried fish is a staple diet among the poor fisher folk and excessive salting is a way of preserving fish. Many studies have pointed to the close connection between salt intake and blood pressure. Despite this, there has been little effort to educate the fisher communities of death lurking in their own backyard.