Fish at 5

It's time. For the rumble of fish carts, dripping blood and salty seawater and scales, hand manouvered through the city's fog by wirey, barefoot men proffering these elongated rickshaws. Bare chested machi marathoners all, crossing the city from the fat vessels berthed at Sassoon Dock, from the gaudily hued boats lining the sands of Cuffe Parade, met by their Koli sailors' thin and dark Maharashtrian wives with their nine-yard sari's tucked between their legs, their giant red tikkas, heavy gold earrings elongating their lobes, and forearm gondans.

Each spot disgorges white fleshy pomfrets larger than my face and bouncing silver mackerels to be magically, lovingly basted in soft, yellow caldine curries for the Goan fish on Friday Catholics, or to end up mysteriously enveloped in coriander chutney-filled banana leaf in Colaba's Parsi kitchens. And then, the fat prawns that curl pink into my grandmother's indescribable dry-fry of golden tipped onions and scattered salt grains and a smell so crisp and potent and lightly caramelised my stomach aches with the juice of remembrance.

The blood and wet leaves pungent possible dinner clues, as crows swoop in, slick opportunists in black, tucking ripped fish heads and entrails into their beaks for festering feasts, amidst the overhanging trees. It's 5 am. The bells on the carts are tinkling. Now, the machi walli will hoist her spoils, glistening in a newspaper-lined basket, onto her head, and begin her daily pitch, gliding door to door as housecoated ladies peek from around back entrances and haggle in the early morning air.

The smell of catch reeks through my grilled windows, the sea shushes a kilometre behind our home, where the flags and fisherfolk stand, now still. I cuddle deeper into my nana's soft breast, and breathe. Even now.

Machi: fish
Machi walli/walla: fish woman, fisherman
Gondans: tattooes
Koli: Bombay's fisherfolk clan
Tikka: religious forehead mark