The room has a bluish glow about it; fishing nets flow out from the long steel racks – bundled, rolled, and folded, the dashing blue mesh is everywhere. The fishnet storehouse of King Fish, a shop that sells fishing gear in Kasimedu, bursts with a variety of woven nylon nets. All the way from Pune, the machine-spun nets await a ‘valai mesthri’ or net master to customise them as per a fisherman’s requirement.
“Our job is similar to a tailor’s,” says B. Kumar, a net master. “They cut and sew fabric; we do the same with nets.” He explains how fishnets arrive in bundles at shops in Kasimedu. The difference between the various types is defined by the size of the ‘eye’ of the net. Kumar has a team of seven that works on orders. “A finished product will look like a huge cloth bag with a handle,” he explains. “We will sew five to seven types of nets, with the one with the smallest ‘eye’ at the centre, into which the catch will settle – this section is called ‘madi’.”
The ‘mengaan’, the portion that floats on the surface, bears floats tied to it; while the lower portion ‘keengaan’, that’s underwater, is hemmed with a metal chain and lead pellets to weigh it down. Ropes that flow out from the mengaan are attached to the boat’s rear end. The current traps the fish into the madi. Since the net set-up incorporates various sizes, a variety of fish, from the bulky vanjiram, to the tiny kara podi, can be caught, explains Kumar.
Kumar learned the craft when he was a little boy. “Jawahar, a mesthri from Kerala used to work near my house,” recalls the 45-year-old. When Kumar quit school due to his family’s financial difficulties, fishnets lured him. “Initially, I hung around when my master worked and assisted him till I gradually picked up the method of sewing nets,” he says. “No one teaches you these things; one has to learn by observation,” he adds.
Today, there are 16 net masters in Kasimedu, each of them with a dedicated team. The men are part of a trade union and arrive at the net yard, a sprawling stretch of land near the fishing harbour, at 8 a.m. every day. “We work on new orders or mend old nets that fishermen send across in cycle-rickshaws,” explains Kumar. The net master is perhaps the only person who earns more than a boat-owner. “We make up to Rs.60,000 a month on average,” he observes. But the task involves a lot of hard work — the men spend up to five hours on a single fishnet.
Although a fishnet is machine-made, there are some varieties that a machine cannot produce. “In such cases, my family pitches in,” says Kumar. “My wife, sister, and aunts can weave nets by hand. They’ve been doing so for many years. Traditionally, fishnets were entirely hand-made. But we changed with the times.”As far as net masters are concerned, a fisherman constantly switches loyalties. “For instance, if a fisherman notices that the net made by a particular mesthri fetches Rs.10,000 more than his, he will immediately approach him to make his net,” smiles Kumar. “Nets can change lives.”
