Dried and Dusted

The West Bengal state of India has always been known for its rich culture and diversity. This innate taste and style is reflected in their dishes too. Their cuisine is essentially. A lot of its flavours and masala mixes have been handed down from over a thousand years and Bengalis to this day retain those recipes which make them truly “shonar Bangla” dishes.

- Debalina Bhatta

The Ocean’s Roar Canon EOS 80D 18mm F/3.5 1/2000 ISO100

Dried Fish popularly known as “Sutki”is a very popular Bengali food dish across West Bengal and Bangladesh devoid of their stinking smell.

The Fishermen community who deal with dried sea fishes are placed at the outskirts of Mandarmani sea beach at Midnapur district of West Bengal about 170 kms from Kolkata city, India. They start working from November to March every year. The male community goes early in the sea to catch fishes in their boats. The women of the community mainly indulge in the sorting of the fishes according to their types and shapes and then hang them under the sun to get dried.

After the drying process is complete these fishes are sent to the wholesale markets and from there are transported to different parts of the state and even around different cities of India. The bigger dried fishes are for human consumption and the dust type variety are used as animal feeds in poultries, farms and different fisheries. This particular community mainly works around 3 to 4 months on this project site as they stay there in their makeshift houses amid the stinking smell of these dried fishes. When the season gets over they move to other areas for other kinds of work.