“You bargain like a fisherwoman!” says a street vendor at T-Nagar, when a customer refuses to agree on a price for a kilo of guavas. A primary school teacher yells at her unruly students, “A fish market is better than you lot.” “Don’t talk like fisherwomen,” admonishes a mother when a fight between her kids gets nasty.
These associations have been around for a long time; people caught in bitter fights are often compared to buyers and sellers haggling over the price of fish. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say such associations have led to a general wariness among people going to the market to buy fish.
When our research work pitched us right into the heart of the fish market, we found ourselves having frequent conversations with fish traders. But when you see the struggle that the profession imposes on people–and the resilience that is found in them–one begins to question these negative associations with fish markets and its people.
Kalaivani,* a forty-year-old mother of two, begins her day at 4 AM. She gets breakfast and chores done before she leaves for work at 5:30 AM. A retail fish trader operating out of a neighbourhood market in Chennai, every day, she takes a train ride to the Chinthadripettai Fish Market near Egmore to choose her stock for the day. She has to be back at her house in time to get her two sons ready for school and open her shop.
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