It was a professional hazard of sorts , Ariyaratna, thought mindlessly.
Things had not been goin well for a couple of days ...The catch had been falling and it seemed the sea was taking out her frustration for overfishing by not giving any fish at all. Trawlers had returned empty and apart from a few mussels and crabs there was a very few trawlers returned even with half full stockers. Experts and shaman were of no help as everyone knew that with the monsoons catch would fall..this was expected ..but the drastic fall had left the entire village of Galle in tatters. No amount of incense burning could quell the hunger as it grew in response to the dwindling of the catch....!The local moneylenders were on a ball ... as men after men handed over their precious few items in return for a few pounds of broken rice sourced from the limitless but corrupt Govt fodders....! The village moved in slow agonizing motion as if it was inching towards a lifeless existence...
To return without any catch and look into the empty eyes of his two children Babiya and Banduka and his already malnourished wife was a scene that would play long into night . As he had slept the last night he had dreamt of bad signs... sea water rushing into his home as he struggled to keep the two boys afloat. The dream had ended with his wife calling him out to get up and meet Danuja.
Danuja was his asistant and he was the one who did the nets on their trawler, Mantan. Now the trawler was a 15 footer diesel ,which again looked as if it had been trawling for several decades while Airyaratna had bought it a year back from the old man who was getting too old to fish now. Mantan also reminded him of the loan pending with the money lender ...infact he had cut notches on the flat board to keep a track of the payments he had made. These notches in these times also moved like the life in the village itself..slow.
As they sad and sipped a bit of leftover arrack..Airatna looked into the sea..and nodded aimlessly to Danuja. Danuja understood..
Nowadays everybody had begun to understand.
Babiya came running around ..dust covered and smelling of the rotten fish.
"must have been rolling in the godforsaken cleaning pen..atleast even now some one is getting some fish to be cleaned.." As Aiyratna eyed the pinched belly of his youngest a shadow of despair washed over him.... It was not like him to cry infront of this youngster. After all he was his skipper..his leader...
Aimless thoughts and the sure possibility of wasting another hold of diesel and coming back with the mudcrabs and godknows wat was not the best thing to happen this morning...
However he had to go...no other way out..
" Boss, why dont we take her out towards Alwa islands, Manu had been fishing there for a while and his catch had been good.."
Aiyratna gave a tired look at the boy...."yes catches there had been good...although not good enough to risk Mantan in the sharp rocks that rose up like sharkteeth around Alwa.."
"The boat was a 15 footer, it wont take the sea and Alwa was beyond the 40 mile set by the officials...No ..Doesnt look like a viable option....
Danuka doesnt kno anything , just another of the useless punts who had left the vilage to return with smaller radios and bigger boasts....No ...not there..."
Calls echoed out as women and children ran to haul in the boats that had left two days back...and soon died down as the eyes had rested on the empty stocker...
"How long will this go on O God....these empty boats ...dry faces..tears and another day of gruel.."
Dhanuja seemed amused by the whole spectacle of women hauling away catch in a bucket...There was that much only. He was half amused by the meagreness of the catch and half amused at the bickering that broke out on the beach as men struggled to divide the catch....!!
Aiyratna got up , dusted his back , and looked at sea again...!
" Ok Danu, time to get our boat ready...Stock her up for four days...and meet me in the afternoon..We leave for Alwa tonight"
Dangling his legs from the broken raft...he had wished he had not taken that decission...
Rains and choppy seas had turned Mantan away from Alwa. With the strong current..the tiller and rudder were useless...! Within hours the water had hit the rudder and torn it away....Sails had gone already ..and as water had filled up the engine...the boat had lost power ..and the will to live. A sharkteeth had done the rest....
All that was left of his "Mantan" was the raft they were sitting on now. Atleast Danu was there with him....
They had been floating for a day now .... And Aiyratna had never ever felt the sun to be so merciless. They were so low in water that every wave washed over them drenching them in a fresh coat of salt and slime...! And in no time the sun had dried it into a sadistic plaster that gradually tore open their hides to another spray of the same...
Even for their already hardened fishermen hide ..this was a slow and painful treatment that had left their skin numb now...
With the raft aimlessly drifting towards nothing...and clear sky sun...both of them were drying up . Danu had in desperation gulped a few mouthfulls of sea a few hours back and now lay writhing in pain as diarohhea took out the last remaining drops of water from his body...! Aiyratna had held on to his temptation...however as the raft drifted without any land in sight...He was losing his conciousness...
Thankfully the day was going down...atleast he would die away from the hot glare....
Suddenly he felt a brisk push under the raft. Weak as he was ..instinct told him to pull his leg up..!
" If I am dying , let it not be because of a shark.." his hazy mind was too numb to feel anything else ..
Another push ....
He pulled himself up and looked to see if Danu had left his legs into the waters...! Danu was now a lifeless mass of limbs in phlegm and sea water ..his body had given up and he had stopped writhing long ago. Atleast his leg was up...
Two pushes one after the other.
Dehydrated and tired with his mind playing games....Aiyratna crawled to the raft end and stopped there....Afraid to look down and see a pair of hungry ..cold lifeless eyes of death staring at him....
Too gentle pushes to be a shark....and yet maybe there were no pushes at all..maybe life playing little games before death took him in...Aiyratna laid on his back and let darkness take him over.
....... to be continued...
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