Vishwakarma's Hammer : Chronicles
Goa,
Goa,
India
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
For hundreds of generations, the fishermen of the west coast of
India have been engaged in their daily ritual: building villages,
strengthening communities, preserving cultural values, and carving out
an independent existence based on craft and trade. Over the past few
decades, all of this has changed. Industrialization and the increase
of mechanized fishing has ravaged the once relatively prosperous
fishing villages, and those that once swelled to several thousands of
fishermen are now decimated, with only a handful who remain to continue
this traditional lifestyle. Increasingly, the village children are
pursuing other careers farther inland, travelling to industrial hubs
such as Mumbai or Bangalore, and much of the age-old wisdom learned and
passed down from generation to generation is fading away. The
fishermen have no cultural heirs, and within a few generations, the
villages themselves will have disappeared.
I have often wondered how it was possible that entire civilizations
lay buried beneath rock and sand, how it was possible for people to
forget about the existence of a whole city; but after witnessing the
slow deterioration of the fishing villages in India, I would not be
surprised if some would soon vanish, their graves marked by concrete
and steel tombstones.
Contrary to what some believe, the majority of traditional fishermen
are not modernizing their craft — they are dying off and being replaced
by an entirely different crowd; by those who are trained in four-walled
institutions, who buy their ready-made fiberglass and metal boats from
the Mangalore shipyards, and who order their fishing nets from Mumbai.
The fisheries industry has replaced the fishermen’s craft. It is a
foreign layer laid upon local tradition, economically smothering and
suffocating the details of their rituals, details which manifest
themselves in the construction of their homes and their boats, in the
mending of their nets, in the food they eat, in virtually every aspect
of their lives from the moment they awaken to the moment they sleep.
Here exists an equilibrium of life that I have not witnessed anywhere
else, an equilibrium maintained by their collective wisdom.
During my visit to the western villages in Kerala, Karnataka, and
Goa, I encountered some fishermen that resisted this industrial
pressure, this directive to bear silent witness to India’s growing
pains. Traditional fishing is about ritual and culture; when a person
is distanced from their rituals, they lose sight of their culture, and
thus lose themselves. In these few remaining traditional villages, I
witnessed how their rituals function to preserve their culture, and how
this culture is manifested in their acts of creation. I witnessed how
they have integrated some modern technologies without sacrificing their
own sense of community or culture. I have learned how they are able
use their senses to determine where to cast their nets while the
industrial fishing fleets rely on underwater cameras. I have marveled
at their sense of community, their co-operation, and their stamina. I
have also seen the disastrous consequences of industrialization in some
areas, formerly prosperous fishing communities reduced to a group of
dilapidated shacks, families living in extreme poverty, sheltered in
recycled tarpaulin, plastic refuse, torn clothes. Yet still they
survive. Over hundreds of years, they have learned to manipulate their
environment for survival, be it lush forests of coconut trees or
mountains of garbage. They have learned to use their bodies to mediate
Nature and Survival. During my travels, I have learned about their
skill at mediation and manipulation.
I have held interviews with high-ranking government officials who
embrace the short-term benefits and disregard the long-term
consequences of large-scale mechanization of the fishing industry,
consequences that not only affect the lives of the traditional
fishermen, but also threaten the architectural methodology which is
passed on in their rituals and the rituals which are inscribed within
their architecture.
My journey begins at Nattika Beach in the state of Kerala,
south-western India and takes me north through the states of Karnataka
and Goa, visiting over sixteen traditional fishing villages as well as
modern harbors in an effort to understand the traditional fishermen’s
rituals and their relationship with the mechanization of their craft.More about this journey can be read at www.wabiblo.org
