AS you drive along Mauripur Road towards Hawkes Bay, a concrete wall appears about two kilometres from the sea and runs along the road on your left-hand side. After it reaches Hawks Bay Drive, it turns left and continues for another kilometre or so. The area enclosed by the wall contains a number of small fishermen’s villages. Roads are being laid within the area enclosed by the wall, and the nullah that flows through this area has been blocked; the space where the water fanned out from the nullah to the sea has been blocked as well. Much of the area has extensive mangrove forest.

The villages within this area and around it are Brahvi- or Balochi-speaking. They claim that they had been living here well before the British came. Many of their families own small boats in which they go into shallow waters to fish and then take their fish to the many piers along the bay to sell their catch. Others are boat-hands on larger ships that go out into the deep sea. They are paid on a daily basis, or a percentage of the catch.

The retail and wholesale trade in fish is big business for the villagers, but given the unequal relationship between the fishermen and the aartis, the villagers........

© Dawn