Kalimpong Calling

Of Fishes, Generators and Anteaters

The thirteenth essay from my 2002 book Kalimpong Calling.

Of all the mischief that one makes as a school boy there is none that is as inviting as an escapade to the river to swim and fish. In Kalimpong when the monsoon rains provide a new lease of life to the numerous streams and jhoras that dot the hillside, there is a different charm in hopping about the boulders or peering into the shallow collection of waters to look for tadpoles, the rare fish fries and the occasional long-legged jhingey puncha. To do so after having escaped illegally from the stifling monotony of the summer classroom further increases the sense of adventure.

Of course in a sense we never grow up. Come a strike and we find hordes of adults cavorting about in the sands of Relli and Teesta trying to bring to fruition school-boyish fantasies that they never really grow out of. It is another matter though that the methods change. Given the resources that maturity can muscle, the Horlicks bottle and the torn fragments of mosquito nets give way to the bleaching powder, gelatine sticks (though with the sort of notoriety that the agitation imparted to explosive devices these are definitely very rare today) and the occasional hook, line and sinker. But the mother of all fish catching accoutrements today is the generator. Indeed this calls for a high level of organisation. The porter who has to stand patiently, knee deep in the flowing water bearing the burden of the humming genset like a patient caddy. The scavengers who will scour the water for fishes stunned by the intensity of voltage that the generator can muster. Also those to arrange for the petrol and sundry other liquids of diverse potency.

In one such group that I accompanied for an electric fishing orgy of eating, I counted up to about thirty enthusiastic fish-hungry individuals who did not spare a single fish fry from their catch. It is although quite another matter that by the time the catch is made and the spoil unceremoniously dumped in a vessel smoking with oil of dubious chemistry, there are very few who are actually conscious enough to savour the taste of their labours. And yet they go again and again.

I have unfortunately been on numerous trips that they do not show on National Geographic. In the tea gardens that I used to vacation in the summer and the winters there are standard measures to hunt. If it's the porcupine (which many swear taste better than chicken) you smoke the burrows. If it's the scaly anteater (which many swear taste better than chicken, again) you flood their underground chambers. For the wild fowl roosting under the tea bushes in the night it's a torch light on their bewildered eyes and then the swift deadly trajectory of the catapult pebble. For the frogs (which many swear taste better than anything, even chicken) it's a flaming torch in the night. The nocturnal amphibians simple stare mutely at the flames. All that the frog connoisseur will have to do is pick the creature and then impale it on an umbrella rib. The pile of twitching frog bodies get higher and higher and yet the urge to harvest them is almost insatiable. Some bring them home and dump them whole in boiling gundruk. Like Hindi movie Tarzans clutching at tenuous vines, the dead frogs bob up and down, hands up, in the mesh of gundruk for the frog connoisseur to gobble in drunken glee. If it's the larvae of the hornet (which many swear taste better than prawn) it's another nocturnal raid on some high treetop or a crag with a flaming torch.

Indeed for some rustic nightlife promises great excitement and rush. Except of course to the poor animals who if they had any voice would have begged to differ.