Spawning Something Fishy: Why Fish Formaldehyde is a Deadly Recipe

Wholesale fish traders submerge their catch in a poisonous formalin solution to keep them from rotting.

According to a report, wholesale fish traders submerge their catch in a solution called ‘formalin’ to prevent rotting. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Lord Curzon’s whimsical partition of Bengal in 1905 started the swadeshi movement in the state, the first coherent anti-colonial agitation in India. Today, Bengalis have nobody to agitate against but themselves. But a 21 June report in Anandabazar Patrika has the potential to create great upheaval in Bengali hearts– and stomachs.

The report, with the dramatic headline, ‘It bleeds when cut, but the fish isn’t fresh; it’s all chemical jugglery,’ has sent shockwaves through every Bengali hearth. The story said wholesale fish traders, who buy bulk catch off boats, store fish in warehouses. To keep from rotting, the catch is submerged in a solution called ‘formalin’.

Now ‘formalin,’ as anyone who has ever strayed into a biology or chemistry lab – or morgue – knows, is the popular name for formaldehyde. This is a relatively simple carbon-hydrogen-oxygen compound. It can form complex chains and transform itself into other compounds with many industrial uses, from polymers to car-making. Traces are present in automobile exhaust and tobacco smoke.

Preventing Decay of Dead Tissues

Dissolved with water, formaldehyde prevents the decay of dead tissue, which is why it is used to embalm corpses. All those freak two-headed calves, six-legged frogs and mutant foetuses you see in museums are suspended in a formaldehyde solution.

What preserves dead tissue is lethal for living humans. In small, sustained doses of around 4 percent, formaldehyde can rot your liver or guts; a 37 percent formaldehyde-water solution can kill an adult in minutes. In chemical labs and for industrial uses, this proportion – 37 to 40 parts formaldehyde in 100 parts water – is known as 100 percent formalin.

Formaldehyde prevents the decay of dead tissue, which is why it’s used to embalm corpses. (Photo: iStockphoto)

How Does Formaldehyde Affect Humans?

It is unlikely any fish merchant knows – or cares – about the effect of formaldehyde on people. Their main concern is to keep the catch looking fresh and to prevent smell. Formaldehyde achieves both by minimising the effect of oxygen which speeds up decay and stink, and by ‘fixing’ protein molecules to produce a synthetic firming of dead flesh.

Municipal authorities in Calcutta are on high alert, scouring markets with formalin detector kits, reports the media. Will their sleuthing be successful?

Formaldehyde fish is guaranteed to cause shudders to all fish-eating people of India – in the east and northeast, but also most people on our vast peninsular coastline. But it will cause violent burps and refluxes among Bengalis, chronically dyspeptic from culinary excess.

A Sweet, Historical Fondness for Fish

Niharranjan Ray, in his magisterial History of the Bengali People, points out that fish-eating was prevalent in the great riverine tracts of united Bengal, Assam and Orissa from pre-historic times. Ray says Aryan food taboos, prevalent in north India, never made a dent in the east and far south.

Indeed, he quotes passages from the eastern Brihaddharmapurana that specify five types of fish that Brahmins are allowed to eat: hilsa, bhetki, magur (or catfish), sole and rohu. To make things even better, poonti (barb fish), other white coloured and scaly fish were also included in the Brahmin diet.

Naturally, the piscine Bengali latched on to the Mahabharata tale of Arjun shooting the eye of the fish to win a fifth of Draupadi’s hand. They adapted it to their marriage customs.

Fish-eating was prevalent in the great riverine tracts of united Bengal, Assam and Orissa from pre-historic times.(Photo: iStock)

When Gifting Fish is A Tradition

Before a wedding, at least a pair (or more) of fresh rohu, smeared with vermilion, is an essential part of the gifts sent to the groom’s household. The new bride is welcomed into her in-laws’ home and given a live loyitta (Bombay duck), which she accepts in her left hand and releases into the family pond.

Globally, Bengali men are probably the only ones who are (marginally) more obsessed with fish than with women. Proof of this comes from Sushilkumar Dey’s authoritative compilation of Bengali proverbs, which has more entries about fish than about the fairer sex.

One of the most popular proverbs is about the Beral-Tapasyi, or Cat-Saint. It’s about hypocrisy, and essentially translates as, “Oh my/The fish is dead/And tears are shed/From the cat’s eye.”

A Powerful Cultural Motif

This is such a powerful motif that over 200 years it has been visually represented in Bengal woodcuts, Kalighat pat paintings and even in the art of Jamini Roy. The image shows a cat with a tilak on its forehead, a rudraksh rosary around its neck, grasping a prawn in its mouth with a grave expression.

With such attraction, animosities must follow. The rivalry between West Bengal’s ghotis and East Bengal’s bangals spills over from football to food. The former champion chingri – prawns or lobsters (which is an aquatic insect, not a fish) – the latter, ilish or hilsa, a variety of shad. Of course, everyone eats everything with equal relish, but styles of cooking differ.

For example, gourmet historian Chitrita Banerjee, a ghoti, recalls her shock when she visited her husband’s home in Bangladesh for the first time, and was told that the bawarchi was cooking hilsa in ghee with lots of spices. This is anathema to ghotis who like their ilish steamed with mustard in banana leaves or made into a very light, tangy curry. To Banerjee’s surprise, the rich bangal recipe turned out delicious.

Fish is widely considered to be Bengal (and much of India’s) favourite food. (Photo: iStockphoto)

The Irresistible Lure of Shutki

Social historian and raconteur Radhaprosad Gupta recalls growing up in Cuttack, Odisha. There, a routine schoolboy jape about Bengalis was to tease them about eating ‘rotten’ (dried or shutki) fish, which Odiya upper classes wouldn’t touch. Many Bengalis turn up their noses at the piscine cuisines of peninsular India (kingfish peri-peri of Goa or prawn koliwada from Mumbai come to mind), believing so many spices overwhelm the ‘real’ taste of the fish.

But today, the terror of fish formaldehyde will overcome all these differences. What’s a little ghee or peri-peri pepper compared to the killer chemical being injected into Bengal’s – and much of India’s – favourite food?

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)