Travels around the Indian coast

Tamil Brahmin youth of average height, and not too skinny. Marinate him for two years in an American college. Fry him nicely in the thick masala of present-day Indian journalism. Finally garnish him with a round of yet more Western learning. Serve immediately. That’s the recipe for this delightful first book by Samanth Subramanian, a 29-year-old journalist with the business newspaper Mint. It’s full of fresh flavours, and while some may feel it lacks ‘gravytas,’ it’s certainly more fun to read than most of the stodgy tomes served these days.

The book is an account of Subramanian’s travels in eight of India’s nine coastal states (Orissa is inexplicably left out). And while Subramanian enthusiastically samples fish wherever he goes—except in Gujarat, where most of its fish is exported to other parts of the country—his book isn’t just the tales of a fish foodie. As he puts it, “...fish can sit at the heart of many worlds—of culture, of history, of sport, of commerce, of society,” and Following Fish deals with a number of other subjects.

In Gujarat, for instance, he learns about the building yards of Veraval and Mangrol, India’s leading boat building towns. In Tamil Nadu, he studies the ambivalent feelings that the Paravas, a Catholic fishing community, have towards their church. And his chapter on Goa is an elegy on the state’s fishermen, who are being either swept away—or seduced—by the tourism industry. Unlike most Indian journalists, Subramanian has a nicely quirky way with words. When he watched fish being fried in coconut oil in Kerala, “…it smelled very familiar and yet very wrong, as if somebody had decided to make tea with Head & Shoulders or salad dressing out of Brylcreem.” Shown a hideous, snake-like fish called the beral, he felt “…its face was thuggish— definitely the sort of fish to avoid meeting in a dark, deserted bend of the river.” Subramanian is a devotee of a kind of journalism— exemplified by the American magazine New Yorker—in which articles tend to be extremely long and sprinkled with literary references. If you’re one of those who prefer snappy, down-to-earth styles, you may occasionally get restless at Subramanian’s leisurely pace. But be patient. This is a good book, well worth your time.