Geetanjali Krishna: Thank god for plastic!

Walking around the lake of Sattal near Nainital early one morning last week, we were appalled to see so many plastic bottles along its banks. “Let’s pick them up and chuck them in a dustbin,” I suggested, “as our good deed of the day!” So we clambered down to the waterfront, our city slicker legs slipping on pine needles, to a place where a dozen bottles lay. But something looked not quite right. The bottles were arranged too artistically to have been just thrown there. They all had some sort of string twined across. In front of each bottle, there was a pile of carefully stacked stones. I lifted one of the bottles gingerly, for it was old and dirty. Instantly, the stack of stones collapsed with a clatter.

“What do you think you’re doing?” hollered a voice from the bushes, making us jump out of our skins. A sleepy looking man emerged moments later. “You’ll scare the fish away!” he said. That was how we realised that we’d disturbed a cranky old fisherman trying to get a morning’s catch. He seemed reasonably mollified as we apologised, even laughing a little when we said our idea was to do our bit to clean the lakefront. “Most of these bottles you see have been placed by fishermen. Tourists throw them everywhere and we recycle them as cheap and effective floats,” said he.

How did they do that, we asked. Our fisherman, whose name was Mohan, explained. Fishing tackle and rods, he said, were expensive. “Also, there’s no guarantee that if you set up a couple of hooks, the fish will actually take the bait,” he added. So instead, locals would buy reels of plastic thread and hooks. All they’d do was to tie one end of the plastic thread to a plastic bottle, and attach a hook to the other end. Depending on the time of the year, they’d mix corn, millets or wheat flour into a doughy bait which they’d stick around the hook. “The beauty of this is that the plastic bottle acts as a float that even a 20 kg fish cannot sink,” said Mohan. Everyday at dawn, he fixed half a dozen fishing bottle traps at dawn, and napped for a couple of hours before checking on them to see if he’d got lucky. “If a fish takes the bait, the line becomes taut. This makes the stones drop and I wake up,” he said.

As we walked by the water’s edge, we caught other fishermen napping. Mohan hailed the ones who were awake, trading stories about the fish that were caught and the ones that got away. “The lakes that dot this region teem with fish like carp, rohu and mahaseer,” said he. Even though the lakes are protected, the fisheries department issues some licences for fishing, which the locals take full advantage of. “At the lake, a rohu will sell for as much as Rs 150 a kg. And the lake has fish that are even 18-20 kgs! Although, of course, there are days when we don’t catch a thing, there are others when we can make a decent day’s haul,” said he. Most had other day jobs, Mohan said. Fishing to them was just an interesting activity that sometimes yielded income and, sometimes, a jolly good dinner. The best thing, he said, was that this home-grown tackle allowed them a leisurely nap while waiting for the fish to bite.

Watching a dragon-shaped boatful of noisy cola-drinking tourists float by, Mohan said, “People like them will ensure we never run short of plastic bottles … and thank goodness for that!”