A year after her marriage in 1994, Harsha Tapke, a fisher woman from Versova, a small fishing village in Mumbai, started her own business of selling fish to keep her sense of self intact. Tapke, now 45, belongs to a conservative fishing family of the Koli community. Her 65-year-old father is still part of the business. For someone who has studied only till Class X, Tapke’s confidence and vibrancy is unmatched. I didn’t want to depend on anyone else, she said. She had some idea about the business. Her family used to sell fish at the Marol market for generations, the only source of livelihood for the family of five. We used to get clothes stitched once a year. Earning Rs.100 used to be a big thing for us during the 1970s and ’80s, she recalls. Next to the real estate explosion along the Yari Road in Versova is the sinuous and cacophonous Versova villagehome to around 15,000 Kolis, Mumbai’s fisherfolk community. Every other day, the fisher folk, including the men who sail early morning and the feisty, bejewelled women who sell the day’s wares at markets nearby, fight the city’s municipal authorities and real estate developers to keep the land that Versova’s Koli association, Vesawe Koli Samaj Trust, owns. Kolis are believed to be the oldest inhabitants of the land that is now Mumbai. The late 1980s saw the dawn of aquaculture in India. This transformed fish culture into a more modern enterprise. With the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, the fishing industry got a major boost. Tapke’s earnings grew and so did costs. When I started out, I would buy fish worth Rs.500-1,000 and I would get a profit of Rs.50-100 a day. In those days, that amount would be equivalent to Rs.1,000 in present day’s value. That used to be a very empowering feeling for me, she said. Over the years, the cost of fishing rose. In fact, expenses related to diesel and maintenance of a boat now amount to as much as Rs.2.5 lakh for an eight-day fishing trip. This was just Rs.5,000-10,000 about 25 years ago. This has led to a lot of people, including Tapke’s husband, to quit the fishing business. He belonged to a family where education was given a lot of importance. Both my husband and his elder brother work in a bank, she said. His salary has increased from Rs.5,000 a month to Rs.30,000 now. Tapke’s earnings from fishing supplements the family income. Mumbai’s fishing villages are facing an existential crisis amid the depleting quality of water, dead fishes and land sharks. While the Koli community settled in the area long before modern Mumbai grew around these small villages, the members of this fishing village are considered expendable anachronisms by people who covet their valuable sea-facing land. Because of their age-old practice of sun-drying Bombay duck and shrimp, they are considered unhygienic and a nuisance by some neighbours. Tapke’s wage may have gone up, but her propensity to spend remains focused on her son Tanay’s education. She is satisfied with a simple cotton sari that wouldn’t cost more than Rs.400. Alien to the branded culture, she looks at the invasion by western retail brands as another source of unnecessary expenditure, one she is happy to resist. Tapke has spent her entire life in India’s financial capital. She took her first trip outside India to Europe in 2012, courtesy employee benefits given to her husband who works at a bank in Nariman Point. My needs and desires did not change with the opening up of the Indian economy. Even when we travelled outside India, we did not buy any foreign goods. I just found everything to be more expensive. I’d rather buy everything here. We went with the sole purpose of travelling and seeing the world, she recalls. While she may not have changed her source of buying clothes over the years, Tapke is progressive enough to let her son adapt to the changing times. She does buy him all the branded stuff a college-going student would demand, from Reebok shoes to Levis jeans. She is also very clear that she doesn’t want her son to continue in this profession. Tanay is currently studying engineering at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology in Juhu. There is nothing left in this business for us. The cost has gone up, we have seen expenses rise with the levels of dirt in the water and the boat has to sail farther away to collect fish. I have thought to myself many times that there is nothing here for our children to pursue. It’s been a struggle bearing the dirt (for us), she said. I want our children to study as much as possible and go out. I keep telling my son apna kuch brand banao, she said. He has just got a job placement with L&T. If my son has a bright future, I would want to leave this profession behind.
2016 HT Media Ltd.