Karwar: She sells shellfish on the seashore

About a year ago I traveled to Karwar, a town on the northern coast of Karnataka or Uttar Kannada as it is called locally. It is in this part of the Konkan Coast that my maternal family's roots lie. I was there of course, scouting out some seafood. 

One of those mornings, I went to the beach a bit early to try and meet some of the fishermen out to get their daily catch. I was hoping to ask them if I could join them on their ride out to the sea... they had set out before 5 am, and by the time I met them at 7:45 they had returned to the shore and were sorting their catch by type and size.

Beach Bums

Fishing boats coming back after a morning at sea

Later in the day I went off to Karwar town to explore the market. The vegetable market was a bit further inside the town while the seafood market had a separate space built for it in a different spot just off the main road. It was a market yard shaded by a tin roof and raised platforms for the sellers to arrange their wares.

It was interesting to observe that the marketplace was dominated by women vendors - much like Anasuya Sreedhar observes in this great article in the Goya Journal.

Within there market there seemed to be an understanding of territory or arrangement - inside, under the roof and on the concrete platforms were the sellers with bigger fish - and more quantities of each. They were the ones who got their catch from small trawling boats, I assume.

Check out the long blue teeth on this one!

Outside, sitting in a row, were those who had an assortment of smaller fish and crabs - the kind of catch I had seen the fishermen sorting from their two-man row boats in the morning. They didn't have raised concrete slabs to demarcate their stall; instead, they arranged bundles of their catch in tubs or baskets.

She sells shellfish on the seashore

Here outside, is also where I found shellfish in plenty! Oysters, clams, muscles, fresh as could be - most of them already shucked from their shells - lying in tubs of water. I asked if I could taste one or two of them raw; the ladies chuckled at me, but then handed me a nice plump mussel. It much was sweeter and creamier than I expected!

Farthest away from the tin-roofed inner-market, under the coastal afternoon sun were vendors of dried fish. Serpentine fish with piercing eyes and razor sharp teeth sneered viciously - and looked as though they had been petrified in a moment of rage. Next to them salted mackerel arranged systematically on a blue tarpaulin, as though someone was trying to recreate a school of fish under the sea. Old ladies with baskets and sheets of drying prawns in the widest range of sizes! As big as a coin to smaller than the nail on my little finger!

"Hisss!"

Mackerel drying

Dry fish of all kinds!

As I left the market I reflected on the fact that being in the seafood trade in a coastal town like Karwar was a collective family effort. The boys and men went and caught the fish before dawn. And when they retired home for some rest, the women brought the day's catch to the market to sell.