Fish & Shellfish

The Subcontinent has thousands of miles of coastline, not to mention island nations like Sri Lanka and the Maldives, so seafood is locally available to many people. The Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and Andaman Sea all provide seafood, while the rivers large and small that drain the Subcontinent are also important sources of fish. But with regard to fish and shellfish, some things have changed in the last few years.

In 1977, I lived for five months in Thiruvananthapuram (then called Trivandrum), the capital city of the southern state of Kerala in India. I was not far from Palayam Market, the city’s second-largest outdoor food market and quite a beautiful one. On my side of the market was the fish section. When I walked to the market, I would deliberately take a longer route that circled around and missed the fish. In the very hot, humid Kerala weather, the fish section had an unbelievably difficult smell, at least for me, the uninitiated. Almost the entire section was made up of individual stalls selling dried and salted fish, and because there was a lot of fish, it was a big smell!