There is something fishy
This happened yesterday, a Saturday.
It was an off day. Me and my wife decided to go for an early morning walk near the beach. So we got up at 5.30am, were out at the beach by 6 am, after a good 30 mins of brisk walk, we decided to head back home. Wife suggested buying fresh fish from the fish stall dotting the road close to the beach. I nod an ok and we drive over to the fish stalls.
Usually we find parking, but yesterday seems to be a busy day, a lot of cars around. So I drop my wife at the entrance of the fish stalls and go further ahead to find a slot. I rumble forward slowly hoping someone would back up and vacate a slot. Few meters ahead I see a familiar brake light glowing red, it is a red car, the next instant the reverse lamps glow. I pat myself for having driven slow and to have matched the exit of the red car. Once that car moved out, I drove right into the now free parking slot, parked and headed back to the fish stalls.
Honestly speaking, I am not a big fan of buying this so called fresh catch,
1. They don’t clean the fish up at the fish stalls.
2. When my wife cleans up the fish, it becomes my task to sanitize the kitchen (we live in a flat, so have to make good with the small kitchen).
It was quite crowded yesterday, every stall had a bunch of people either buying or enquiring or bargaining for the fresh catch. I move along trying to locate my wife, mind you she isn’t very tall (god plz, let her not read this one..). Meanwhile I see all kinda fish, big fish, small fish, shell fish, wriggly ones, crabs and some strange looking ones.
I walk on, see a familiar attire in the crowd. It is my wife. She is pointing out to a flat out piece of blob like thing and the fish seller was pointing here and there on the blob. I approach closer and realize she was enquiring how to cut it, on approaching even closer I realize it is stingray, a small one, not those enormous ones we see on NatGeo. No wonder, it looked like a flat blob. I was unfamiliar with this fish and from the pieces of conversation that I picked up, my wife was asking the fish seller how exactly to cut it up. So this is her first time as well.
Back in my mind, I was wondering why can’t she stick to the usual king fish, mackerel or sardines, I enjoy those. But then, here she is, getting expert advice to dissect a stingray. I was glad to notice that thing didn’t have scales, so may be today I won’t have a tough time cleaning the kitchen.
So we got a stingray, didn’t bargain about the price, but as he was packing, my crafty wife said, bhai “2-3 yeh vala dal dena (pointing at the mackerels)”, and that chap smiles, and complies. In goes 3 mackerels and hands over the package to us.
Drive back home was uneventful. We had a good breakfast. I settle down on the sofa and start browsing the news channels. Started with the international ones, it was the Californian wild fire, celebrity homes burnt down, then Khashoggi execution, and some sports. Now I am propped down, legs stretched, I switch channels, browsed through the movies, end up seeing some of Saving Private Ryan and I doze away.
I am dreaming now, of Saving Private Ryan being the last visuals, I am in the middle of a war in my dream. There is an explosion, a soldier dies, his arm flies into my direction, it is still wriggling. And I am shivering. A moment later I am jolted out of my sleep, I realize I am not shivering, it is my wife, she is next to me, she is shaking me, calling out my name aloud.
I am now awake, confused, I ask ‘What?’. She seems distressed, she says you should see this. She grabs my hand, walks over to the kitchen. I see the cutting board, few pieces of the stingray in cubes, the rest of the pieces stacked high in the container that goes into the freezer. A bowl of masala paste, all set of marination. I ask again, ‘What is happening?’. She whispers, keep looking at the piece on the cutting board. The moment she finished the sentence the cut cube moved, not a big movement as such, but it definitely moved.
I was shocked. My wife screams. She says it is the ghost, the spirit of the fish. She says she cannot continue, I have to marinate. And, here I am rudely woken up from a horrifying dream, only to see a fish caught many hours ago, cut into a cube and yet wriggles. OMG!! There is no way I want to touch that.
I then try my best to convince my wife, out comes capillary action (Stringray bones look like small tubes), muscle spasm (on a dead fish, really?), and what not… in the end, since her hands had already touched the fish, convinced her enough to put it all in the freezer. We decided we will fry them later. Creative me steps up again, out comes the potato, goes into the marinate paste, and we have a very veggie lunch.
Post lunch, wife was busy googling for an explanation. I said I had enough, she can google and build her theories, but don’t share them with me. She then says, the fish is spooked.
Around tea time, wifey says, she cannot eat what is in the refrigerator. She isn’t going to cook that fish. So she messaged her friend in our apartments, didn’t tell the whole story but highlighted the part saying “We have some very fresh stingray, uncooked, cut & cleaned, would you like to have some?” And off goes the un-dying fish.
Phew…. Strange as it is, may be the words have mellowed down the mayhem it caused, but one thing is pretty sure our hunt for ‘fresh’ fish has officially ended
![Big Grin](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.png)
… if not for long, deff for this week and the next and the week after. What is even stranger is the dream, and how it transformed into reality. Wriggling arm to a wriggling fish piece. May be my subconscious was busy picking up sounds from the kitchen and weaving my dream around it or maybe it was a spooky encounter… who knows.