Photo Essay - Fish Market
Space, place and culture in Fish Market - Photo essay
As an photography assignment, we were asked to click pictures of the space of a fish market and describe the culture seen there. Here are the clicks and an essay describing a typical fish market.
The fish market has low lying tables made out of old wood in a straight row with tiny stools that the fishwives sit on. The stock of fishes is stored in boxes piled on top of one another that act like their refrigerators with ice covering the fishes in them to keep it fresh. They arrange the fishes in a particular manner to attract customers, they place the biggest fishes at front and smaller ones behind. Prawns, lobsters, shells and other seafood are placed on sides and corners. When you visit the fish market, it looks like the fishwives hate each other and have a lot of competition because of the way they argue with each other to get the customers to them, but on talking to them, I realised that they all share a close bond and only have competition in business. Most of the ladies belong to the koli family coming from Daman and others are Christians. Be from whichever caste, all of them wear the typical similar sari, a lot of jewellery and have their hair tied up in a bun with flowers called “gajra” tied on it. This attire shows their identity of belonging to a fishing family, their authenticity and the freshness of the fishes they are providing as coming right from sea.
Only females do this job of selling the fishes as they say it’s the men’s job to go out in the sea to catch the fishes. The men are doing the sportier job which requires more stamina and energy and the woman’s job is to sell them. The women’s job isn’t as easy as it looks like, they sit every single day from 9am to 2pm and again from 4pm to 9pm in the heat with crows, cats and mosquitoes attacking their fishes. They have to store the fishes properly, keep washing the fishes to keep them fresh, scream to attract new customers to their table. Most of the customers have their fixed fishwives they straight go to to buy their fishes and have a relationship built with, but for new customers, it’s like a train in a stock exchange market. You move in a train past all the tables of fish and leave the train as soon as you find one table interesting.
It’s funny how Hindus believe that non vegetarian food shouldn’t be kept near gods, but here, each lady has a picture of the god she believes in hanging next to each table of fish, above their drawer of money. Customers look for certain qualities in the fish before purchasing, the eyes of the fish should bulge out a little, the skin should bounce back and the gills should be red, not pink. Customers first pick up the fish and observe these qualities or ask the fish ladies to show that the qualities are there in the fishes. After this, the customers go onto bargaining. Customers typically say things like I’ve been coming to you since so long and the other lady is giving me the same fish at a cheaper price. The fishing ladies try not to get the price down by saying that their fish is more fresh and their fish tastes better. Their livelihood and income depends on the stock they present on the one small table that belongs to them.
These are few of the pictures I clicked
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