Meerasa and his island

by Shounak Majumder (India)

Making a local connection India

Meerasa, walked into the stretch of blue-black turbid water at the centre of the sequestered island. He folded his checkered lungi around his knees and bent forward to touch the surface of the water. With ferocious agility, he grabbed hold of something at the bottom of the pool and threw it near our feet. "Hero! Machha" (Hero! So cool), exclaimed my friend Sweta as an emerald-green crab scuttled away in frenzy. Meerasa stood in the water like a quasi-Crusoe figure, in charge of his own island. We were at Pulicat, 60 kilometers from Chennai, in order to observe the migratory birds that flock to the area. Pulicat Lake is the second largest brackish water lagoon in India. Some adventures kick start with the strangest of invitations. "Come with me. I will take the both of you to Lake Pulicat on my bike", said a stocky man, that morning, as we tried making our way through the madding crowd of Pazhaverkadu fish market. Sweta and I tacitly agreed to accompany him. This man, a local fisherman, agreed to be our guide for the day. M. Meerasa, he proudly pronounced his name. Ten minutes of a rocky bike ride later, Meerasa welcomed us onto his wooden boat painted in bright mint green and fluorescent yellow. The boat had two slits running through its vertical midsection. "They are there to control the buoyancy of the boat", he said. Water kept erupting out of the slits as the boat tossed in the noonday gust. I felt like I was perched on a green whale scurrying me away to one of Blytons wondrous dreamscapes. Meerasa was to take us to an island, nearby. On our way, we passed countless boats tied to gargantuan wooden anchors with kelp caught between the cracks. I heard a flapping noise from above. A snow white bird, with an arched neck and an orange beak flew past with its majestic wings open like a hang glider. "Look! Egrets", Meerasa shouted. A horde of Egrets were on our far left, nonchalantly staring at a burgeoning overcast. A solitary Spotted-Pelican was nearby with its head in the water. Momentarily, as it removed its head, I spotted a thin sliver of a dying silvery fish trapped in its humongous ochre sac-like beak. As soon as we neared the island, the sound of the motor disturbed the slumbering birds in the area. Almost immediately, they rose like an ominous vortex, like a primitive Pagan ritual in all its feral glory. Meerasa, stationed his boat at an island which reminded me of Bergman's plague infested landscape from 'The Seventh Seal' with the antelope-horn-like decaying branches and ravens sitting on it. The obsession with the death leitmotif took an upswing with hundreds of half eaten Kilangans (Lady-fish) littered around the coast. We ambled along the beach to reach the other side of the island. Bigger fish liners were making their way to the Pazhaverkadu market. The dark clouds overhead had dispelled. Seagulls were adrift midair in a gossamer of sun beams. “Let’s go to Surikota! They must be catching Jhingas (Prawns)", said Meerasa. The fishermen there had magpie-nest-shaped bags clutched in-between their teeth as they formed a circle in the deeper end of the water. All of a sudden they dove downwards using their body weight and emerged with prawns dexterously gripped in a tight clutch. On Meerasa's request, Murugesh a fisherman, proudly displayed his bag full of glassy lime-green-tinted prawns with spiky orange antennas. Later Meerasa invited us to his house for lunch. I delightfully munched on the crispy skin of the deep-fried Kanageluthi fish (Mackerel) generously served with pickled potatoes in meen-curry (fish curry) and chili omelets. Sweta broke her pact with vegetarianism and gulped down a tiny piece of fish all in lesprit daventure. As we boarded the bus back to Chennai with the fish smell on our clothes, Sweta and I promised to come back during the winter when the elusive pink flamingoes find their way back to Pulicat, in search of a warm nest. Next time, I will come armed with my bird-log and a 300 mm zoom-lens, and a bag of tobacco for our new friend Meerasa.