The Old Man and the Sea

17 February 2011

The sea is all Kunthal knows. He went on his first fishing trip at the age of ten, hopping into a catamaran with his father and his friends as they set off from Tholpetti, a small fishing village near Thondiarpet, four kilometers from Chennai. He had already lost his fear of the sea by then. “Our fathers would put us into the water and teach us to swim, that was the first step.” he says, looking towards his friend Rajakumar who smiles at the shared memory. “I was not afraid. My father was there, I just went along.”

He had a typical initiation into the world of fishing – puking his guts out into the sea not only the first time but every time for nearly a month before his body finally resigned to its fate and stopped.

But that was a long time ago. He reclines now on the shore of the Marina beach a bearded old man of sixty, his back to the noisy squalor of the fishermen quarters, eyes following two young men assembling their nets near the water to go fishing. Where he is sitting, the beach is cluttered with rows of boats, engines and cocoon-like bundles of fish net. A little away, to his left, revelers shriek and horses trot wearily carrying eager children as parents watch.

Kunthal sits up and turns to watch as the young fishermen, with grave expressions on their faces and thin, sand covered legs, run back up the beach slope to fetch another set of nets. The evening sun is getting ready to disappear behind the light house that stands where the beach sand meets the sprawling Beach Road, on the other side of which rise white government mansions from guarded green lawns. Hidden from Kunthal’s view by these imposing structures, the city hums and growls.

The young men have finished arranging the nets near the water where their boat waits and are scampering up again in a hurry. Kunthal follows their movements eagerly as though he wants to tell them something or offer help. He gets up and shakes the sand off his clothes. The young men are going for the engine which lies on the beach bundled up and covered by a tarpaulin. They carefully remove the cover and insert a pole through the ropes tied around the engine and lift the weight onto their shoulders, then breathing heavily, walk to the boat. Kunthal turns away from this palanquin ride. There is not much he can do to help.

He too had once gone fishing like these men he now envied. First it was in Tholpetti, where he grew up before coming to the Marina beach in Chennai. In those times they used only the catamaran to go fishing. “They were much safer than these motorized boats,” he says. “Even if water entered and the vessel broke, we could take the wood apart and float on them. Boats sink easily, the minute water enters”.

Kunthal himself had owned a boat once, and a diesel engine to power it. “I’ve caught all types of fish there are,” he says. “Sharks, ones as big as our boats,” joins in friend Rajakumar. “But the tastiest fish is the Vanjiram ,” says Kunthal. “Nice big fish…”

 Rajakumar no longer goes fishing to earn a living though he can’t resist the temptation to jump into the boats once in a while. An eighth-pass, he left it for a better-paying government job at Aavin, the Tamil Nadu Milk Cooperation. An illiterate, Kunthal had no such options. But he too gave up fishing forever in December 2004, after the tsunami struck.

No one at the beach knew what a tsunami was until it happened. Kunthal was picking fish off his nets when the water suddenly rose and moved inwards with terrible force, lifting the docked boats up off the sand and carrying them along. “The water came till here,” he says, holding his hands near the neck. “It went past the light house to the government buildings there”

Kunthal dropped everything and ran to the road like everyone else. But before he could reach the road, the water had submerged it. Unable to tell what was on the ground, he tripped and fell, hurting his knees badly.

 That day the tsunami carried away kids playing cricket on the beach and joggers out on their Sunday run. Along with them went Kunthal’s diesel engine, his nets and his livelihood. His boat landed on the road, but the fall left Kunthal unable to do go fishing. “Fishing is a tough job,” says Rajakumar. “It takes a lot of strength to carry the engine. To launch a boat into the sea, at least four men have to push”

The grave-faced young men from before, both in their early twenties, are latching the engine on to the boat. Two other men from the fishing colony have come to help them out, fitting the propeller and loading the nets into the boat. One of the fishermen suddenly remembers something and sprints back to fetch it. A thin gold chain jumps on his neck as he runs, set off against his red vest. Kunthal watches him as he goes. He was about the young man’s age when he moved to the Marina to marry Konasunthari, his wife of thirty six years.

Six months after his wedding, Kunthal was helping to anchor a boat during a fishing trip when his left hand was caught between two ropes. In an instant of terrible pain, he lost his ring and middle fingers. “They fell right into the sea, so the doctors couldn’t have stitched it back” he says simply, stroking the hand which he always keeps wrapped under a white hand kerchief. Despite the injury, Kunthal kept on fishing, a little slower at work than before, but he had a family to feed.

Another tragedy would come two years later, when he lost his infant son, the second of his five children, to an illness. Kunthal prefers not to talk about such things. His daughter, 35- year-old Gandhimathi, the eldest in the family and the older of two girls, remembers her dad as a restless man who continued to fish despite dwindling profits.

 “He would always be running about doing this and that even though the only time he traveled out of the beach was to go visit relatives back in Tholpetti”, she says. “After the tsunami he was left a little broken. He still spends most of his time at the beach but he can’t go fishing”. Kunthal and his wife now lives with Gandhimathi and her family. She, along with her husband, takes care of her parents and two younger brothers. Kunthal’s other daughter is married and lives with her husband in Royapettah.

The tsunami crushed more than Kunthal’s livelihood. It changed life forever at the fishing colony. “We were not afraid of the sea before,” says Rajakumar. “But now we’re always cautious”. For Kunthal too, the fear he cannot remember ever feeling as a child is now a constant presence. “Even if it’s only a big wave, we move away,” he says.

The catch from the sea has gone down drastically since the tsunami. Big commercial trawlers have done more damage; ruthlessly emptying the sea before small time fisher men from Chennai’s fishing villages got a chance to fish. But two young men readying their boat seem willing to take their chances. They insert a pole each through two of the four handle-like coir loops attached around the centre of the boat on the edges. The two young men fire up the diesel engine and grab the boat from the right, holding the vessel with one had and using the other to lift the ends of the pole onto their shoulders. The men who had gathered to help do the same on the other side and push the vessel with their hands and shoulders, keeping an eye out for the incoming wave which will carry the boat into the sea. The propeller’s runs furiously. The men struggle as Kunthal gets restless on the edges of an old catamaran where he is sitting. They miss a strong wave, and wait for another one.

“Hoy!’ Kunthal shouts, looking at the sea. A wave’s approaching. The young men push with all their might on all fours side, their feet digging into the sand. The wave lifts the front portion of the boat up a bit. The struggle continues. In an instant, Kunthal jumps up and is by the boat’s side, helping to lift on to the wave’s crest. Rajakumar also joins in.

 A final push and it is done; the vessel jerks and is rides over the wave. Kunthal falls back, the other men also let go.

Only two fisher men jump into the boat, throwing the poles inside. The one in the red shirt rushes to the front to balance the boat as it is thrown up and down by waves. In a few seconds, they’re past the waves, leaving only a trail of diesel fumes behind. Kunthal slowly walks back, engaged in some banter with the other men, a little taste of the old life making him smile.