Following Fish

March 14, 2016
Traveling alone, Subramanian, a freelance writer based in New Delhi, collects the stories of fish vendors, boat builders, restaurant owners, fishers, and toddy shop owners from numerous towns along India’s extensive coast. The journalist explores how fish have influenced culture, history, business, sports, and culinary traditions along the Indian coast. His curiosity leads him to investigate a diverse range of topics, including the best time to eat the hilsa fish; a government-supported faith healing treatment of swallowing live fish, called the Gould treatment; and finding the perfect fried fish coated in spices and semolina in a region possessing a “particularly complex strain of cuisine.” While on the hunt for the fastest fish in the ocean, Subramanian delves into the extraordinary attributes of the sailfish. He explores how human greed has fouled the oceans and how professionals, sport fishers, and tourists have altered life along India’s coasts: “In a common paradox, traditional fishing families were moving away from their trade, and yet harbors and ports were crammed past capacity with motorized fishing boats and trawlers.” This memorable travelogue should entice anyone remotely interested in the culture and food ways of coastal India. This is a superb guide to a rapidly changing region of South Asia. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell.

April 1, 2016
A travelogue by an Indian journalist about the many roles of fish within his nation's culture. Though there are many mouthwatering meals devoured within these pages, Subramanian (This Divided Island: Life, Death, and the Sri Lankan War, 2015, etc.) maintains that "this book goes beyond considering fish as merely food...fish can sit at the heart of many worlds--of culture, of history, of sport, of commerce, of society." The author recognizes that though his subject may be fish, his stories are about people, told in the words of those who fish, those who eat fish, those who build fishing boats, and those who witness the tension in the coastal towns between the economies built on the traditions of fishing and the transition to tourism. Most of the book is first-person reportage, with the author visiting locations that have a seashore in common but are culturally diverse. One of the most interesting shows how "in the mid-1530s, roughly twenty thousand people from thirty villages converted to Christianity--possibly the largest single conversion in history." Yet he finds that the culture continues to find "an older base of Hindu customs" under its "veneer" of Catholicism. Spirituality also figures in the faith-healing pilgrimages of tens of thousands for an asthma cure that involves ingesting a live, wriggling fish. In other chapters, Subramanian discovers that home cooking offers him a taste of heaven that no restaurant meal can approximate and that fish curries can be as diverse as the cultures that spawn them. He also shows how villages that have depended on fishing for generations have found a faster and easier way to generate income through tourism, which threatens the fishing. In the end, however, something essential remains unchanged: "Fishing is still elemental in the most elemental sense of the word--an activity composed of water and air and light and space, all arranged in precarious balance around a central idea of a man in a boat, waiting for a bite." An enjoyable exploration of the coastline of India, with a focus on fish.

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Starred review from April 15, 2016
Searching India's coast from east to west, New Yorker food writer and journalist Subramanian hunts down India's finest fish cuisines. As he travels, Subramanian meets with legendary chefs, fishmongers, town gossips, and religious figures, discovering obscure restaurants and local culinary traditionsa particularly entertaining episode revolves around the toddy, an alcoholic beverage that's made from the sap of coconut flowers, though often sullied by creative mixologists eager to extend the drink's lifespan (like cutting heroin with flour). Tasty descriptions of meals populate the narrative, though Subramanian's journey also leads him to unveil both India's economic disparity and cultural diversity. In one chapter, he explores how tourism in Goa has led to vast environmental degradation, responsible for eroding the fishing industry. In another, he describes a yearly ritual in Hyderabad, where tens of thousands of people come to swallow a live fish stuffed with medicine, believed to be a cure for all maladies. Unique and entertaining, Subramanian's impassioned, well-written, thoughtful quest will draw in even readers who might not have the same tireless love of fish. A cultural and culinary journey well worth taking.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)