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Freedom fighter Bhabani Mahato votes in 2024

The brave and unassuming Bhabani Mahato, farmed, cooked and fed her family and other revolutionaries through decades of India's historic struggle for Independence. Now nearly 106 years of age, she carries on the fight...casting her vote in the General Elections 2024

For someone who catches fish – and prawns – the absence of a fishing net was conspicuous. “I have never used a net,” he said. “I use my hands. I know where they [the fish] are hiding.” Pointing to the river, he continued, “See these edges of the stones, and the water weeds and algae beneath the river? These are the homes of the chingri s.”

I peered into the river and saw, concealed in the weeds and algae were the riverine prawns that Anirudhdha was talking about.

We revisited the conversation about his lunch, which is when he explained from where the rice for the meal would come. “If I work hard on our little piece of land that yields paddy, I somehow manage enough rice for a year’s khoraki [consumption] of my family.”

The family, which lives in Kaira village, in Puruliya’s Puncha block, belongs to the Bhumij community, a Scheduled Tribe in West Bengal. Adivasis constitute more than half the village’s population of 2,249 (Census 2011), and they depend on the river and for food.

Anirudhdha does not sell his catch – it is reserved for his family’s consumption. Fishing is not work, he says, it’s something he loves to do. But his voice became gloomy when he said, “I go to faraway lands to earn a living.” His search for work  has taken him to Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, most of the times as a construction worker, and also other jobs.

He was stuck in Nagpur during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. “I went there with a thikadar [labour contractor] to work on a building project. It was very hard to manage in those days,” he recalled. “I returned a year ago and have decided not to go back as I am aging now.”