Neither Fish nor Cash: A Day in the Life of a Demonetised Bengali

The bothi – a giant curved blade fixed on a seasoned block of wood – gleamed in the sunlight as Arabinda sat behind it, on his haunches, calling out to prospective customers: “Fresh rohu, take some boal away or some pomfret.” Like other crestfallen Bengalis, I too gawked at the pile in stall after stall at the Chittaranjan Park Market-II, salivating at the prospect of gorging on the fine fish.

But the bite of reality was harder. My fingers instinctively felt for the jeans pocket which had a few Rs 100 notes – not quite enough to buy myself the luxury of a kilo of rohu, its shimmering scales adding to its beauty, the dark-scaled kaatla or even the humble tyangra. They are, in today’s financial circumstances, beyond my reach.

For five weeks now, me, a Bengali to boot, has not tasted fish; all because there is not enough taka in my pocket – or the bank or the ATMs. So, the Saturday morning drive to CR Park was an expedition in futility – only to walk along the aisles of the fish stalls to satisfy the piscean urges of my visual and olfactory senses.

Fish is to a non-vegetarian Bengali what paneer is to a north Indian vegetarian or (butter) chicken to a Punjabi.

But what would The Leader, who conjured up the devious demonetisation – and its consequent debilitating effect – know of the pangs and angst of a Bengali fish-eater.

I am no ascetic in food habits and neither are, I presume, most Bengalis of CR Park. To live without fish for five weeks – yes, that is 35 days – is equivalent to the effect of a cold turkey, brought by not my own will but by a decision that borders on lunacy, which reminds me of a Pink Floyd number, Brain Damage:

The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me ’til I’m sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.

Perhaps The Leader?

Well, he has certainly made his intentions clear: He intends to stick to his decision and brazen it out, people’s miseries be damned.

Only UP matters, Indians can beg, borrow or steal… or simply perish. This would be akin to the “thoughts” of The Leader’s leader, an otherwise saintly man who fervently believed that “India is the centre of the earth”.

My centre of earth this Saturday morning was Arabinda’s fish stall. Arabinda and the other fish-mongers deal only in cash.

The fish business, not as fishy as the Leader’s, works on simple – and human – cash dealings. There are no highfalutin Paytm or other pesky plastic cards with which you make payments, at least not in the fish scale-scattered aisles of CR Park’s fish market.

Arabinda was kind enough to allow me to buy some fish on dhaar (credit or udhaar in Hindi) but that was as disagreeable to a proud Bengali as rotten fish.

Arabinda and his ilk buy – in cash – their supply of fish from the Ghazipur mandi in UP just across the Delhi border. The fish traders of Ghazipur in turn procure their huge supplies from “parties” or agents from Kolkata, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Vishakhapatnam, Vijaywada, Odisha and Mumbai.

Arabinda pays a Rs 1,000 tax on maal (fish stock) worth Rs 1 lakh. Besides, his daily expense includes rent for the stall, Rs 500 each (in cash) to the four labour hands he has employed and ice which costs Rs 800 per kg (during winter and Rs 1,000 during summer).

The long-term damage of demonetisation, Arabinda explains, is incalculable. Yes, indeed. The fish-mongers of CR Park are “somehow managing now” and waiting for 30 December, the time set by The Leader when black magic will turn Indians honest and black money will be banished. Bah!

There is more Arabinda must worry about: Bengalis have more than halved their consumption of fish. Sales have plummeted from Rs 40,000 a day to Rs 18-20,000.

Bengalis who relished fish everyday are now not-so-content with consuming the aquatic creatures twice a week. If that is not misery, what is? But surely, Arabinda’s misery is greater than mine.

And as I turn back from his stall, I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s words which apply so much to The Leader in these trying times: “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”