Two Men and the Sea

My umbrella is stuck in the guest room, and there’s a guest in there. It was 5:30 am and time for my walk with Palayam. There was only a light drizzle. In the early pre-dawn light, I could see that the sky was overcast. I was hoping that Palayam would bring two umbrellas. Palayam was standing at the usual meeting point. But he had no umbrella, not even one. That didn’t make sense. I have said earlier that Palayam doesn’t mess around with chance.

“Anna, let’s pick up the office umbrella,” I suggested. “Vendam-na, kaathu kachchan kodaiya irukku. (Not necessary, brother. The wind’s blowing from the southwest.) It’s not like a few days ago when the winds were blowing in from the northwest (kun-vaadai). The north-south vanni karsallu nearshore currents too were pronounced. Now that has changed.

“Thanniyum thendiya irukku, kaathun kodakachhanaa adikkuthu. Mazhai varaathu. Vaanga nadappom. (The currents are also from the south; the winds too are from southwest. It won’t rain. Come, let’s walk),” he said casually as he started walking.

I had many questions. But I subsided into silence. I have written earlier that Palayam does not declare anything with certainty, particularly when it has to do with how nature will behave. This certain prognosis of how the rains won’t interfere with our morning walk didn’t sit well with the grand story I was building in my mind of how fishers think, speak and act. I guess like nature, Palayam too is unpredictable, deep and prone to upset generalisations and certain declarations.

We turned into the sandy path separating the village from the sea and the beach where the boats are parked. It was early, but the village looked festive. Freshly bathed, well-dressed people were scattered around. A woman draped in a grand-looking saree was squatting on the path. “Have coffee and go, anna,” she called out to Palayam. He smiled and we walked on. There are five weddings in the village today – all between 7:30 and 9 am. Today is an auspicious day, the first one in the newly born month of Avani (mid-August to mid-September). Aadi had come and gone without any sign of vanda thanni.

“The wind is kodakachhan; the current is thendi; the sea is calm and there is a slight drizzle,” Palayam repeated mechanically. Since July 2018, first at my insistence, and then out of his own growing interest, Palayam has maintained a record of his daily observations of current, wind, sea conditions and fish catch for his village. From this August 15 onwards, we began to record the observations together – he to make the observations, and I to upload it onto an Excel sheet. Each to one’s own expertise.

We had reached the river mouth – the halfway mark in our daily walk – when he began a story about an Urur Kuppam old-timer, Murungakka. Murungakka – the name given to the drumstick like fruit of the Moringa tree – may be an unlikely, even ridiculous name for a person. But Palayam’s mentor was as serious and skilled as his name was unusual.

Murungakka appears in Palayam’s stories quite often; the two must have shared hundreds of sailing hours together on their kattumaram (catamaran). Native to the Coromandel coast, the kattumaram is an elegant craft made of logs of the albizia tree lashed together. Kattumaram designs vary from beach to beach, depending on the size of the surf and the nature of the seas.

It was on a day like this in late aadi or aavani (August to September) — he doesn’t remember; it was too long ago – that he and Murungakka engaged a potta kola (a blue marlin) in mortal combat. Remember, I had written earlier that the kola is found only in the clear waters of the deep, well beyond the edaapu – the line that separates the turbid kalvadu waters of the coast from the clear thelivu waters of the ocean. The potta kola avoids the turbid water. To find the kola, you have to paddle beyond the line dividing the murky from the limpid waters.

On this fishing day, Murungakka and Palayam set sail well before daybreak, at around 2:30 am. The ever far-sighted Murungakka advised Palayam to pick up twenty rupees worth of mackerel as bait. Bait for bait, actually. When you apprentice, you do what you’re told. You can ask why, but only after you bring the mackerel.

With a gentle kodakachhaan breeze blowing from the southwest, Murungakka asked for both sails – the kadaa-p-pai (stern sail) and one on the front, to be put up. “As we put the sails up, the breeze was gentle and from the southwest. We were making slow progress. As we went deeper, the waters did not change (orey neera irunthuchu). It was getting to be mid-day. Let’s lower the sails and let it drift,” said Murungakka. “Ok, uncle, I’ll do as you say,” I said and lowered the small sail first and then the large sail, and pointed the boat east like I would for a land breeze.

The breeze, though, was a nedunkachhaan – blowing from the south. We let it drift. As we go out, we always point east. Only while returning do we turn the craft (kattumaram). We hadn’t reached the clear waters.

“Sometimes it happens like this – that there is no clear edaapu; no clear line where the coastal waters are separated by a zone of murkiness from the clear waters. That happens when there’s a lot of memeri. Our elders call that the virichal – virichalaa irukku (where the turbid waters are spread out). We snagged five or six thaakola (another variety of flying fish) in the virichal using the mackerel as bait; the mackerel were already beginning to smell bad. So that was just as well. The thaakola were alive. When we hunt the potta kola, we look for the kooru kola (the small flying fish) to tell us that we’re in the right waters. The kooru kola will only be in the clearest of clear waters. If we see them flying, we know we’re where we need to be. At sea, they look like angels hovering above the sea. They move in groups. But that day, till the end, we never saw the flying fish.”

The thaakola can’t just be used as bait. If it’s dead, it gets stiff. The potta kola doesn’t like dead bait. Ideally, one would use live bait. Otherwise, it has to be made to look alive and moving. We take the thaakola, hold the head in one hand and tail in the other and move it up and down to loosen it up before threading it on to two hooks – one near the head and the other towards the rear. When we drag it along, it slithers in the water, appearing alive,” he explained.

All the tricks of the hunt, deception, restraint, pursuit and retreat are put to use.

“It was past midday. Murungakka suggested we return. Clear waters were not in sight, and it made no sense to keep heading east. We needed to get back home. Might as well catch the sea breeze. Murungakka asked me to turn the nose home. We set two punn (line) and hook with the thaakola as bait. Each of us wound one end around our thigh. For good measure, we secured our lines with a hook to the bow of our boat. I put the sails up, caught the wind and started moving west.

“All of a sudden, I heard a gasp and saw Murungakka wince. The punn (line) tightened around his mid-riff, his shirt tore, and he was yanked out of the maram. He landed in the water yelling, ‘Machhan, I have it.’ Drumstick was a good swimmer. He held the punn in one hand and was paddling with the other. The line was taut – stretched between the boat and the fish.”

“Why was he swimming with one hand? Can’t he make it to the boat more easily if he used both his hands?” I asked. I am beginning to learn that Murungakka never did anything without a reason. Holding on to the line meant holding on to his catch, and, I learnt, to his life.

“If he had let go, the kola would have dragged the boat away from him. I’d have to cut the line loose to reach my friend. Both of us would have cursed each other for losing the fish. By holding on to the line, he made sure that the kola did the work of bringing the maram (boat) close to him. While at sea, you should never lose your cool, no matter what the situation.”

With Murungakka back onboard, the battle began. With the hook sunk deep in its cheek, the blue marlin fled at top speed dragging the punn behind it. Even as Palayam threw reel after reel of coiled punn, the speed of the fish kept the line taut, and burned his palms. “Both of us took off our thalapa (headgear) and wrapped it around our palms to prevent the line from cutting us. The fish was definitely at least 100 kg. This was going to be quite a fight.

“But you know, I’ve caught this fish 15 times. Once snagged, the kola will only run northeast. Not east, never west, not northwest – only northeast. It knows. It’s in its nature to chart that course in its flight to safety. Never towards land or any other direction.

“We must have battled for at least four hours. It was going to get dark soon. The kola was now four or five boat-lengths away. It was dying. We couldn’t afford to have it die before it came aboard. If that happened, it would have sunk head first to the bottom and there’s nothing we could do to pull it out. We could see it now. Athu mirugam-na (It was a beast, brother),” he said, the awe still evident in his voice. Beast was not used in the biblical sense, but to refer to a magnificent creature that was large, majestic and full of fight.

As it came alongside, it began to tilt head-down. Murungakka dived in with a rope, held his breath long enough to lash the rope in a tight knot around the tail of the fish. As he came up for air, he had a triumphant look. “It’s ours, machhan,” he declared. “The fish was ours.”

“He clambered onboard, and the two of us chanted an amba paattu (a rhythmic chant to ease manual labour) and began hauling the fish. Once aboard, we emptied our kanji (porridge), set our sails to catch the sea breeze and headed to Kasimedu fishing harbour. We got a fair price for it. But I was exhilarated. I didn’t want money. I was just thankful to be working with Murungakka. I told him that. ‘Mama, you take what you want. It was you who caught the fish. Any lesser man would have cut the line and lost the fish than take the trouble to fight with that beast.’”