Meena was swimming in the warm waters of the Laccadive Sea just off Kochi, a city in Kerala – a state in the southern part of India, which probably has the largest number of female swimmers in the country. She was an excellent swimmer and liked to swim in the waters of the continental shelf that extended to about one-and-half kilometres from the shoreline and the various inland waterways in that region. She did not venture into the waters farther from the shore where big fish would be apt to lurk. She did not like to rub shoulders with big fish. She was approaching the colonial settlement of Fort Kochi.
Vasco da Gama, the hero of Os Lusíadas, had once been a part of the mercantile establishment of Kochi. After landing near Kozhikode (Calicut), he had come to Kochi. He had passed away in Kochi on Christmas eve of 1524, a victim of malaria. He had continued to be a resident of the St.Francis Church for around 14 years till he was disinterred and sent to Lisbõa in 1539, one of the many entrepot exports from that fabled town.
Meena swam around the promontory on which the church was built. A little further ahead she could see the Chinese fishing nets at the northern end of the Fort Kochi beach. These nets, on the southern shore of a channel that was around 400 metres wide at its narrowest, were having similar counterparts on the northern shore too. She stuck to the centre of the channel in order to stay away from both sets of nets. The central part of the channel, however, did have a risk of encountering marine traffic, but that was easier to tackle than getting enmeshed in the nets. She was well aware that any fisherman would have loved to catch her.
There were a few boats, with outboard motors, fishing in these waters. Typically each boat had a couple of fishermen in straw hats and they spread a net to form a rough circle with about 50 metres radius. These nets could be identified by the little plastic buoys, attached to them, that floated on the surface. Meena kept away from these and swam further inwards. She kept a lookout for the regular ferries that serviced Fort Kochi and kept away from their paths.
She had now crossed the container terminal on the northern shore of waterway and was now in a relatively deep part of the Vembanad lake system which was a part of India's National Waterway No.3. She swam some more and surfaced for the umpteenth time and beheld the squat but towering building of the Cochin Port Trust on Willingdon Island. She then swam along the channel on the eastern side of the island. Several naval ships were anchored in the area. An aircraft carrier was visible to her left, though she could not read its name. It was time to turn back, she decided.
As she was about to pass the Customs jetty at Fort Kochi, she heard the blare of ship's horn close to her and realised that she had been complacent and had let down her guard. She swam quickly to her left to get away from the path of the naval ship that was about to run into her. She swam faster and faster to get away from the inevitable wake created by the powerful engines of the ship.
In doing so, she got into the perilous shallow waters close to Hotel Seagull. Shallow waters are always more treacherous than the deep. To a good swimmer, it does not matter whether the water underneath is just ten feet deep or a hundred. But shallow areas inevitably result in localised small and stagnant pools and have things like bits of ropes, seaweed, junk, and garbage, which can be hazardous to a swimmer.
There were quite a few bits of fish discarded by fishermen. The flesh on many of these had been eaten by other creatures till only their vertebral columns, the centrums and their accompanying arches, remained as single units. Meena, being a fish eater herself, was not too bothered by these.
The restaurant had two piers extending into the water, the smaller of these was in disuse. The larger one was used as a seating area by diners in the evening. At this time of the day, the sun was bright and diners were sitting at tables under a large canopy. As she passed under the waters of the larger pier, she looked up and saw the skeletal remains of a huge fish. It was clearly around 20 feet long, larger than anything she had seen before. She wondered what kind of fish it might be and how it had landed in these shallow waters. She thought that like her, it had been forced into the shallows to escape some ship and had perished there. She shuddered at the prospect of an end like that.
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A diner at the restaurant noticed Meena swimming under the frond and pointed out to his wife, "Look at that large fish under that coconut frond stuck between the columns supporting of the jetty. I wonder what the fish thinks of the frond. Doesn't it resemble the fish skeletons on our plates?"
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