Fish

Some of my earliest memories are of going to the early morning fish market in Varanasi with my grandmother and being surrounded by all that glistened. I was taught to look for pink gills and clear eyes and remember the smell being sweet, almost floral. Back in the 1970s we didn’t have a fridge in our ancestral home and so fish was always served for lunch before it could perish in the heat of the sun. In lieu of play dates and plastic toys, I was taught the thrill of descaling and preparing sweet, pink-fleshed fish in big copper vats of water on my grandmother’s veranda.