The Great Game

The Cauvery Fishing Camp, at a little hamlet called Bheemeshwari, 100 km from Bangalore, is a major draw for anglers. Though, even without the angling, it’s a cosy place.

You could go on long treks in the surrounding forests, get scared by the slightest rustle in the undergrowth, stamp on elephant dung and panther droppings and come back to have dinner by the river.

I’m doing a bit of both actually, which is why, apart from jaunts in the jungle, I am also listening to MacDonald hold forth on the world’s hardest-fighting freshwater sport fish—the Mahseer. To each his own, and MacDonald’s was obviously this biggest member of the minnow and carp family, superior in sporting qualities, he says, to both the famed blue marlin and the lordly salmon.

Some of which can grow up to disturbing lengths of over a metre and half, eat anything that comes their way and are such diehard chaps that they usually wrench the rod away from the angler, dunking him in the water or dragging his boat for miles downstream. Though I figure even you’d fight like Jean Claude Van Damme if you happened to greedily fall for a freebie dangling from the sky and realise that it was not what it was meant to be.

But such is life and in spite of such conscientious reservations, very trivial, actually, I knew this was an experience that I couldn’t miss out on. More so, because the fish caught aren’t smoked or fried; they are let back into the water after somebody’s taken a snap of the triumphant angler and his confused catch.

Late the next morning, I head out of my tent with Anthony Cruz, my gilee (guide in angling parlance), to seek out the fish that apparently waits for, as a poet puts it, a “call to battle with men with the heart of Vikings and the simple faith of a child”.

Loading our coracle (a round boat made of buffalo hide) with fishing rods and other equipment, we make our way through the swift-flowing river to a rocky outcrop bang in the middle of that particular stretch of the Cauvery.

A crocodile, tanning its leathery bulk on that very same spot, slithers away into the water as we dock near the boulders. There are cormorants and egrets hovering around and the groups of massive trees on either side of the river look from here like two indecisive armies.

Anthony moulds a dark brown ragi (maize) ball around the hook of an imported fishing rod, casts a line and hands the rod over to me. Half an hour later, I’m still clutching the rod, thinking of the therapeutic qualities of game fishing.

The silent surroundings are ideal for dwelling on life’s unanswerable questions—on the purpose of our existence, on how to clear the credit card outstandings and whether you’ve turned the tap off at home.

There have been no nibbles as yet, but what will happen, I ask my gilee, if the great one bites. He replies that the experience will be a slightly violent one and I need to avoid being pulled off the rocks and dragged downstream. If push comes to shove, he adds, we would have to scramble on to the coracle and follow the fish downstream over raging rapids.

The possibilities were exciting, though I was a bit wary of the rough and tumble. Maybe, game fishing in my case would work both ways. My Mahseer would probably drag me into the murky depths, where other fish would snap my pic and then boot me out rod, bait and all. But this novice angler would have his revenge and I decided I wouldn’t smile for the camera.

Two hours pass by, the cormorants have eaten, and the two-minute-noodles man in me is getting restless. “Patience is key, sir,” says Anthony. Another half hour and impatience dances its fast number on my resolve’s head. The sun is preparing for its descent, the jungle is quieter and I decide to call it quits.

“We can always come back tomorrow,” says Anthony. As he rows the coracle back towards the camp, I’m reminded of yet another Mahseer poem which goes something like this: Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway, and I will wait for the men who will win me, and I will not be won in a day.