“Go on, take a look inside,” urges boat-maker Mahalingam. I go up a short wooden ladder, and step into a narrow opening.
It looks like the inside of a gigantic whale. Wooden beams branch off beautifully on either direction from the centre. Sunlight pours through an opening at the far end, rendering the whole place an other-worldly glow. This structure will grow to be a fisherman’s passage to sea — his boat. The big fishing boats used by the city’s fishermen are born on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. They are built at fishing harbour Kasimedu and adjoining Nagoorar Thottam in North Chennai.
Now that that 45-day ban on fishing with mechanised boats as mandated by the Tamil Nadu Marine Fisheries Regulation Act, 1983 is on, the boat-makers are busy as ever. For it’s during the ban that owners can afford to give their boats a rest; while new boats are built, old ones are fixed.
A boat’s lifecycle lasts about 30 years. It all begins in the form of a sketch on its maker’s notebook. Mahalingam, a senior boat-maker at Nagoorar Thottam, surveys a boat that’s being built by his carpenters. He has recently got an order worth Rs. 15 lakhs for a fibre boat measuring 61 x 18 feet.
“A boat is made of vella marundhu , neela marundhu , a resin, and chalk power,” he says, as his carpenters scrape, file, and hammer away on a late afternoon. “It takes three months and the right men to build one. We create a template that we call aasu out of wood after sketching it on paper,” he explains. “Once the frame is created, plywood sheets are used to develop it further. But in the end, all the wood is replaced by a thick coating of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP),” he says.
M.D. Dayalan, the President of Indian Fishermen’s Association, says that several layers of FRP are infused to form a solid structure. “The number of layers can range from 10 to 15 depending on the boat’s price,” he says. In the past, boats were built using aluminium sheets held together by nails. “But FRP took over since aluminium was easily prone to damage,” he adds.
On land, the fishing boat looks out of place. The hull pierces the dry earth, waiting to hit the waves, as is its destiny. The human beings who give it shape look insignificant next to its shapely magnificence.
The colour of a boat is important to a fisherman; he chooses it after consulting his astrologer, according to Mahalingam. The brass propellers are then fitted — these consist of four brass leaves, each measuring up to 48 inches. Once the boat is ready to face the sea, another group of men take over from the carpenters. Without them, the boat can never touch water. They are the boat movers.
With nothing but gigantic wooden rollers and planks, they propel the mammoth structure into the sea. It’s a coordinated process that involves over 20 men of might. “They wind wires around the boat’s aniam (front) and atti (back),” explains Dayalan. “The men then hand-lift the boat and place about six rollers under it and move it towards the sea. A triangular structure called aap is used to break the momentum in between, if needed.”
Every step of the boat-making process involves people — they do not depend on machines or technology whatsoever. “It’s our responsibility to ensure that every structure is perfect,” says Mahalingam’s son Kumar, who has taken over the business from his father. “It’s a matter of life and death. A fisherman surrenders his life to his boat…everything depends on how sturdy it is. This thought runs constantly on our minds.”
