As my reports from Bombay wind down, I finally have for you a look at the place I went back to more often than any other: the Sassoon Dock fish market in Colaba. At the time that I booked the flat in Colaba in which we lived for five and a half weeks I had not realized that it was so close to one of the city’s premier fish markets. But when I did I was very excited. As it turned out, it was just about a 7 minute walk from our building. Reading up on it, I learned that it’s best to go very early in the day. Thanks to jet lag this was not going to be a problem and so I was there before sunrise on our first morning in the flat. Over the next few weeks I went there a bit later each time, but never very far past sunrise. Predictably, I took a lot of pictures on each visit—both of what I bought each time (we ate a lot of excellent fish and shellfish over our stay) and other things at the market that caught my eye. As being a blogger means being able to inflict your excesses on the world, you too can look at almost all the pictures I took across those visits. You’re welcome! 

As I said above, the Sassoon Dock fish market is one of the city’s premier markets. It is also one of the oldest. Sassoon Dock (which bears the name of the Baghdadi Jewish family that is so integral to Bombay’s story) was built in 1875. The original commodity it served was cotton; but with the decline of the Bombay cotton industry the fisherfolk must have supplanted them not very long after. It’s been a long time now, at any rate, since the dock has been given over almost entirely to fish and the people who bring it in from the ocean and sell it on the shore and across the city.

These people are, of course, the Kolis, the original inhabitants of the islands that became Bombay/Mumbai over the centuries. Though a significant minority in the megalopolis, and concentrated into a few parts of the city (in various Koliwadas), they still loom large in the city’s mythology and dominate the local fish markets—though the real money in fish is made not by them but by the wholesalers and exporters who buy the lion’s share of the fish.

Indeed, the big business at the market is mostly completed before the retail customers arrive around or after dawn. The fishing boats come in at 5 am (sunrise in Bombay in January is at 7.15 or so) and most of the most choice items are gone or spoken for before the regular shoppers have even woken up: gone to the restaurants and hotels and the wholesalers and exporters. Arriving even before sunrise, as I did on my first two visits, you’ll pass warehouses in which fish that has already been cleaned or is being cleaned is being packed in ice. You’ll move quickly to avoid cars and vans in which smaller fish sellers and their wares are already being sent out to other markets in the city. Which is not to say that there is nothing happening on the docks after sunrise. There are still auctions happening for a few large fish but most of the activity by then is between smaller sellers who are competing with each other seemingly for the fish and shellfish they will sell across the city and at the market.

But there’s still a prodigious amount of fish and shellfish being sold at the market. And it’s pretty chaotic; the sellers are set up informally right on top of each other, with no formal physical delineations of space; a lot of fish just lies on the ground. And if you read other reports on the market, or watch videos on Youtube, you’ll know that it is not exactly a sanitized experience. The wares are cleaned and cut up exactly where they are sold and water, blood, fish parts and shells are everywhere. (There are also birds swooping in to pick up what they can—the closest I came to getting dirty at the market was when a mackerel head dropped by a flying bird landed two feet away from mine!) Around sunrise it’s also quite crowded both with sellers and shoppers and with men with thelas or long carts who are systematically carting away the fish whose destinations were decided well before sunrise. You do have to be careful to stay out of people’s way. And I can corroborate as well the reports that this is not a market for people who are squeamish. But here I part with most of what people say about the market.

For one thing, while there are puddles of more or less bloody water all over the place, you certainly don’t need to wash your shoes after you get home, or wear rubber slippers to the market as many people say you should do. I rolled up my trouser cuffs a bit but I had no issues avoiding puddles or with getting splashed by innards. And nor did I need to wash my sneakers over my entire time in Bombay. You’ll also encounter endless stories about how aggressive the Koli fisherwomen are (the men fish, the women sell the fish). Yes, you’ll be solicited to buy fish at every stand you pass but all my interactions were good humored. Every single seller was patient when I asked questions about the fish (identity in many cases, price in some). Nor did a single seller object to my taking photos or videos of anything—including the things I did not buy, which was the vast majority of what was at the market. Perhaps it was because I was a genuine (potential) buyer and not wasting their time.

On the first visit I purchased fish and shrimp from a few different sellers. On the second visit I was more or less informally adopted by one of those sellers, an older woman, who took care of me on all subsequent visits. Most of what I wanted she and the women at the adjoining stalls—who seemed to be related to her—carried. For everything else, she told me to look around and tell her what I wanted and she went and got it for me at a far better price than I could have managed. I should say that with the power of the dollar/rupee conversion rate, even the first prices I was quoted for everything would have been outrageous steals in the American context. I also have no illusions that she was giving me the best possible price I could have negotiated if I was a local or spoke Marathi or Konkani. I was, after all, quite obviously an outsider and a photo-taking fool.

Still, it was important to her that other people not take more advantage of me than she thought they should. On one occasion, while waiting for the fish cutter next to her stall to start on my fish, I agreed to a purchase of a rather implausible amount of squid for all of Rs. 300 from a passing seller (unusually, a man). She descended on him and drove the price down to Rs. 250! When I’d ask questions about the fish other people were bringing to that fish cutter, she would quietly tell me if it was worth buying and what to look for in a superior example. And she’d tell me if certain fish at the market—white pomfret, for example—were likely to have actually been landed that day or to have been kept on ice or frozen. All in all, interacting with her was my favourite part of the market experience.

Of course, the fish etc. were very good too. Most of it, I looked wistfully at. The larger fish were too large for me to able to buy (you buy a whole fish, not a part of one) and many I did not recognize (and nor did I recognize the names the sellers gave me for them). My purchases were almost entirely in the following categories: pomfret (white/paaplet on the first two visits, black/halwa on the rest), rawas (Indian salmon), surmai (kingfish), bangda (mackerel), ekru (grouper), shrimp (of various sizes), squid and cuttlefish, tuna (skipjack, I think), small “lobsters”, and on my last visit, ghol (croaker). Everything that I purchased was handed to the aforementioned fish cutter who was located right next to my preferred seller’s stand. This slightly cantankerous woman (cantankerousness aimed, I should say, not at buyers but at the sellers!) cut everything up to people’s specifications, using the one lethal blade to scale, trim and cut. When large amounts of shrimp or squid needed to be shelled or cleaned and she was busy with other fish, the sellers would help out (and usually be critiqued heavily for their efforts!). Almost all the fish cutters are similarly distributed inside the market, between the sellers. This is quite different than I saw in Goa where the cutters are in a different area of the market entirely (and where many are men).

I can’t give you a sense of all of that in the excessive slideshow that follows, though if this kind of thing interests you, you might enjoy the Reels I’ve posted on Instagram on my visits to the market and of fish cutting (here, here, here, here, here and here). Otherwise dive right into the excessive slideshow. If you have questions, or if you can identify the fish I could not, please write in to the comments and I’ll answer to the best of my abilities. Scroll down for a bit more on the market and to see what’s coming next.

Something you might be wondering about from the end of the slideshow: all those murals. In the last 10 years there have apparently been a couple of concerted efforts to beautify the area and a number of striking murals paying homage to the Koli fisherwomen (and men) have gone up in the vicinity of the market. The last four images though are not from that series. They are part of the marketing for a video game called Valorant (this was identified for me by the students I brought to the market on one occasion). Apparently, the main character portrayed in these series of images is Indian. Even though it’s part of product marketing I did appreciate how nicely they incorporated the local scene into it.

Don’t worry, I won’t have any more fish market posts from Bombay. But this is not my only excessive fish market post from this round of travels. You can look forward to one from Seoul and one from Busan. But neither of those will feature in my next report. That will probably be a quick meal report from Seoul. I might try to get it out tomorrow. Let’s see how it goes.