May 14, 2013
It was the time, when no present day electronic media, like television, computer, internet, mobile phones, etc. was available, - I am referring to the period, five or six decades ago, viz. the era during 1950`s and 1960`s, and we the young children and teenagers then entirely depended upon the outdoor activities for our recreation and pastime.
Being born and brought up in a farming family, in a typical village and rural setting, my favourite pass time during the teenage and growing up years used to be rod fishing, besides, of course, playing cricket along with my brothers and children from the neighbourhood. Luckily, I did not have to wander far away from home to pursue my fishing hobby, as there were plenty of streams, ponds and lakes available in the vicinity. These reservoirs of water ran full for most part of the year, and they harboured variety of fish species and marine animals.
I vividly remember and relish those good old days when no sooner I came from the school in the evenings, I would dash to dig out the earthworms (bait for the fish) from the backyard, collect my fishing rod, and head to the nearest pond or stream, and get busy throwing the bait. Before leaving the home, of course, I would always inform my mother or my older sister, whoever was in-charge of the kitchen at that time, about my fishing trip, and that, in the meanwhile, they should grind and keep the masala ready, so that fish curry could be prepared promptly when I got back. In fact, I do not recollect any occasion having returned empty handed and thus letting them down, for there were plenty of fish stock available then and always it was a easy and bountiful catch.
My parents often would not allow me to go for fishing, when I used to disappear for a couple of hours, because my presence was needed to attend some other urgent work at home, like fetching the water from the close by well, or gathering and driving home the cattle from the adjacent hills. But I always convinced and won them over with my point that it was an important economic activity that I was carrying out, in that I brought fish for the family meals free of cost, which, otherwise, they had to go and buy from the far away market place.
Nothing is more pleasing and enjoyable when one catches a fish – either big or small – and my happiness used to be immeasurable, for I always landed up with handsome bounty whenever I ventured out fishing.
My fishing ventures went on well and always very fruitful till about late 1970's, even when I was away from home, working in a different city, but regularly made my trips home during the annual holidays, and I did not notice any real change in the existence of fish species.
However, during the early 1980's, and there on, I did notice a substantial change in the availability of fish stock in the streams. As against my earlier years' experience when I would easily catch large stock of fish within no time, I would invite hardly a few bites, and consider myself lucky, if I caught a handful at the end of the day. Also, I hardly saw any fish physically living in the water compared to the earlier times.
I did not quite understand as to what brought about this rather strange situation, and so, I asked my brother who was then looking after our family farm what was happening. He explained to me in detail the changes and developments that have been taking place in the agricultural and farming sector over the years especially since late 1970's.
The farming was becoming economically non-viable, with the non-availability of farming labour, as more and more people moved away to cities to look for rather easy but lucrative jobs. So, in order to economically sustain themselves, the farmers had to dump their conventional methods of farming and progressively resort to modernised and scientific farming. To begin with, in order to achieve bumper crops, they vigorously and lavishly made use of modern chemical fertilizers like endo-sulphate, urea, ammonia, sodium nitrate etc. which gave them almost four-fold yield as compared to the conventional manures they generally used earlier.
They also started spraying pesticides on the crops in order to kill the pests which were eating up the crops. Sadly, all these fertilizers and pesticides had a negative impact on the environment and neighbouring surroundings, in that the poisonous toxic elements released by them flowed down to the streams, wells and lakes in the vicinity which affected drastically the fish species, ultimately resulting in their demise.
At the same time, with the spread of literacy, education and modernisation, and also upliftment of the standard of living, and also change of culture, progressively, more and more people started eating fish, who took up to fishing as well. As such, naturally, the fish stock got diminished.
While on the subject of fishing, it will not be out of place to mention here that in the olden times, there used to be a particular fishing community in the rural areas, whose full time profession was Fishing, and in fact, they made a living out of it. They excelled in this particular activity. They would go around rivers, streams, lakes and wells with their fishing gear right in the morning and got engaged into fishing the entire day. At the end of the day, they went around from home to home selling their catch. In fact, in those days quite a few families looked forward to their arrival with the hope of buying some fresh fish from them. Sadly though, this particular fishing community has been completely wiped out of from the scene, thanks to the disappearance of the fishing species.
Anthony Crasta - Archives: