Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast by Samanth Subramanian Page A

hurried dinner for a small jumble of priests and invitees, I found that Kattar had barely broken a sweat, his galloping oratory and the close atmosphere of the church notwithstanding. ‘It went well, I thought,’ he said.
    On our drive back to Tuticorin, Kattar was in an expansive mood. ‘This is what I missed in Rome, the ability to interact with the people,’ he said. ‘In all my previous rotations in villages here, I would know every single person. I’d be called upon to mediate disputes. I’d be invited to their homes. I’d be asked to bless the newborn children of even Hindu families. I’d feel involved, and the people would respond with their warmth and love.’ We drove on, the shrubby land around us painted in darkness and the road vanishing a few feet from our headlights. Somewhere, off to our right, I could hear a melancholy wind sighing over the slumbering sea.

4
On an odyssey
through
toddy shops

    I f you ever find yourself on one of Kerala’s highways with an hour or five to spare, keep your eyes open for a distinctive black-and-white signboard by the side of the road. This board will have, in its centre, the single word ‘Kallu’ in Malayalam, and above it, a legend like ‘T. S. No. 189,’ the number being subject to change. If a few kilometres go by and you spot no such board—which in itself would be remarkable—you should flag down the first passing male cyclist or pedestrian and say just one word with a questioning drawl: ‘Shaaaaaap?’ If it is particularly early in the morning, throw in a sheepish smile for good measure.
    You must note here that the drawl is everything. If you simply say ‘shop,’ you will get either an indifferent shrug or a vague gesture towards an establishment selling soap, toothbrushes and packets of potato chips. If, however, you get it right and say ‘Shaaaaaap?—like ‘sharp’ but without the burr—you will get an animated nod and detailed directions to the nearest toddy shop.
    More often than not, you will then drive up to a walled-off compound that has one little structure easily identified as the kitchen, another little structure with bicycles parked outside it, and a number of individual little cabanas. There is, unfortunately, an explicit social code that kicks in at the shop’s gate. If you happen to look like a local or a paddy field worker, you will be led towards the common bar area; if you don’t, you will be requested, equally firmly, to take any of the cabanas that are free. Mixing is discouraged. If you insist on the common bar for yourself, you will get nothing more than a dirty look, but it will be a very dirty look indeed.
    The more upscale cabanas, you will find, are furnished with a small ceiling fan, thinly padded benches around a table, an asbestos roof, and chicken wire windows. Curtains are optional. The toddy will be brought to you either in a pitcher or in tall Kingfisher beer bottles, with glasses or earthen tumblers on the side. And then, inevitably, you will ask for something to eat with your toddy, and thus wander into a whole new subculture of food.

    The best toddy, toddy that is fresh and untouched by base additives, should taste only marginally less mild than milk, with a slight sweetness, a faint note of ferment, and the occasional granule of coconut husk. When it is collected as sap from the palm tree, the toddy is entirely non-alcoholic, and it is thrown into ferment only when it picks up tiny residues of yeast from the air. Tapped early in the day or late the previous night, it would have barely begun to turn into alcohol, so stories of how, in the olden days, the rich owners of coconut groves would knock back five or six glasses every morning for their health seem entirely plausible. As much as it sounds like an invitation into dipsomania, the best toddy at a toddy shop is to be had at around eleven in the morning.
    By lunchtime, the toddy’s sweetness will begin to fade, and a few hours after that, questionable