FISH MARKET

As I walked towards the fish market it stank.  I had, and still have, a strong dislike for the stench of uncooked fish. But I approached the low opening in the tent-like enclosure around the market, I walked through. And at that point, the smell became a natural part of the environment. It didn’t feel pungent and nauseating anymore. 

As I passed through the entrance, I raised my eyes to a world of sparkling fish and bright voices harking at the few buyers. It was a village in itself. The outside world did not enter there except to buy. It reminded me of the ‘goblin market’: the silver, white and pink of the fishes heaped onto one another by kind, calling out to our eyes.

 A hawker splashing water here, a hawker slicing a piscine head there; a trail of blood left behind on the scimitar, wiped onto it by a brain split smoothly down its edges, and the silver scales beginning to glitter evermore under the drops of water that clung to them.

Bulbs hung above hoardings painted with pictures of fish and names of stalls; bulbs that swung when the wooden posts holding the stalls together creaked and swayed by passing hands taking their support. Yellow and white and gas-lit lamps twinkled in the eyes of the hawkers who called out to the buyers, the hawkers who were your friends the moment you stepped into their den.

“What fish will you take, sister?” called out one, blocking our passage through the narrow cobbled paths. He turned to another who sat, legs folded and a grin wide open, above his stock: a fine collection of slender and fat, large and small, half kilo ilish and ek kilo ilish, thrashing black fish and quiet white ones. “Same quality we are giving at half the price!”, he beamed.

“That cannot be quite right,” my mother replied, indignant and half full of spite. “This fish is not as fresh as the one on our plate the other night!” 

“Fresh it is, sister! Take a look!” the first one said, and he picked up a fat one and thrust it straight at her head. “See how good it smells and the gills are so red! Now tell me sister, have you seen a fish more fine than the ilish of the Podda divine?”

“From the podda it may be, but it does not smell divine to me!”

“There brother, slice it well. We’ll give it to our sister at half what we said,” the first one declared, tossing the fish up to his counterpart at the scimitar.

I turned around, I left the stall, I walked back to the corner by the door. Whether the fish we’d bought was a king or not, the stench of it stung me no more.