Chasing the Catch, Barefoot in the Grind

I start work at 3 am while the city still sleeps, and the ice cuts my fingers till they bleed, but I have mouths to feed," says Imran, hoisting a crate of mullet at Ghazipur Fish Market.

- SHIBA PRASAD SAHU @ New Delhi

I start work at 3 am while the city still sleeps, and the ice cuts my fingers till they bleed, but I have mouths to feed," says Imran, hoisting a crate of mullet at Ghazipur Fish Market. For twelve years the wiry laborer from West Bengal has lived by the whistle of refrigerated lorries and the smell of offal. Each dawn he earns between ₹500 and ₹2,500 hauling fish from trucks to auction tables. After paying for a shared room and cheap food, he wires home about ₹20,000 a month.

"If I stop, the children stop eating," he shrugs. Imran's ordeal is echoed by hundreds across the market. Ghazipur, shifted from Jama Masjid in 2000, is now Delhi's seafood artery; nearly 300 wholesalers and 1,500 laborers handle 200 tonnes daily from the coast. Restaurants would starve without them, yet these men stand ankle-deep in meltwater with no gloves, boots, or medical cover. When COVID-19 shut the gates in 2020, Imran pawned his phone and hitchhiked home, surviving on boiled leaves. Debt soon dragged him back. It is a cycle that traps the poorest in the dirtiest jobs.

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