Fish

I'm a Bengali. By heredity I love fish. I love eating it. I even love watching it swim around in the glass bowl.

Of all the things I miss from my hometown, fish is right up there on the list. We Bengalis sure know our stuff when it comes to fish. It would probably take me ages to list all the dishes we make with fish - curries, fries, roasts, paturis, ambals, jhols and jhals. We even treat prawns and crabs as fish.

Hilsa, or as we call it, ilish, is one of my favourites. Ma makes an awesome oli-free ilish-bhapa, which is steamed hilsa with mustard and green chilies. The mere thought of the deep aroma of the dish makes my mouth water.

We use up almost everything of a fish - the flesh, the head, the bones - except for the scales and fins, I guess. Murighanta primarily uses the head and bones of a rui or chital (or a similar big fish) and it still remains one of the best delicacies I have ever tasted.

It's kind of sad that I cannot think of fish other than as food. The irony is that one of the things I'm actually scared about happens to be a fish too. Sharks.

Fish can be beautiful too, when I look at them in an aquarium. All multicoloured with intricate designs. I remember I had a fish bowl once. It had two fishes, one black and one orange. Unfortunately we also had a cat, who, god knows how, managed to scoop the orange one out and devour it while we had been away. The other one, I assume, stopped eating the fish-food from the trauma of the whole incident. Also, when I was cleaning the bowl, it took its chance and leaped into the sink and disappeared down the drain. I think it felt the cat would get it too and I won't blame it. I was really sad though.

I also like animated movies about fish - Finding Nemo and Shark Tales always make me smile. And as much as I am scared about sharks, Jaws continued to be a captivating thriller. The music spend a spark dowm my spine.

One of my favourite books is Ernest Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

I've never been able to try my hand at fishing, but I'd like to do that some day. It ain't easy, with all the lakes and pond disappearing under buildings. My grandma told me stories of her catching fish in pieces of thin cloth in her village when she was a kid.

So, yes, I'm a fish person. And proud of it.