My Fish Souvenirs. Part One: India and Sri Lanka

by Howard Norfolk
Aquarticles

Each winter for the last twenty or so years I have taken five or six weeks to travel wherever I wish in the World. The fascinating and friendly country of India has been part of my itinerary for the last five years.

I have come home from India with lots of the usual souvenir elephants, tigers and Hindu gods, as shown below, but most of all I can't resist a pretty fish!  Live fish would be impractical to bring home, but I get lots of satisfaction from looking for fish ornaments, and these are some that I have collected:

  I was in England for the start of the new millennium 2000, and then went to India. This is the collection of souvenirs I brought back from both those places.

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR ENLARGEMENTS... THEN GO "BACK"

  The next year, 2001, I went on safari in Kenya, then went back to India and on to Sri Lanka.   These are gifts from my Indian friends - among them are many fish, close-ups of which will be seen below.

In 2002 I visited Hong Kong, Bangkok,  and India.  This is my collection of souvenirs.

MY INDIAN SOUVENIRS:

  These first examples are of course dolphins, not fish. I have some good friends in Mamallapuram, near Madras, and Mamallapuram is a famous centre for stone carving.  My friends had these carved especially for me. (There used to be a "Dolphin Park" tourist attraction near Mamallapuram, but the dolphins died and have now been replaced by performing seals).

  I was also presented with this pipe, beautifully carved from stone.  It hasn't been used for smoking anything  yet!

This stone ball was another gift. It is about the size of a tennis ball and is beautifully carved with a variety of creatures, including the fish and seahorse seen on this side.

  Two small hand-painted pottery fish, with holes in the eye area. Curtain or blind pulls?

Sandalwood is an aromatic wood popularly used for carving in India - mostly elephants and tigers and such, but this is a fish carved from a solid piece of wood with another fish inside it.

A small wooden bowl - and a very cute fish

  This string of traditional scent bottles came from an antique store in Bombay.  They are made to look "antique", although of course they are not, but their slightly grotesque shapes attracted me.

  Touring an ancient temple in Bhubaneswar, south of Calcutta, an itinerant souvenir salesman approached me.   As is my habit, I asked if he had any fish. He hurried off, and came back ten minutes later with this nice collection, so I bought them all. 

   Carved shells with sentimental messages are popular tourist souvenirs in coastal areas, and are sold in stalls right beside the beaches, where they can be custom-carved.  The "Good Luck" shell I bought, the other was a gift.

       
All over the World, people who don't have much luck with their fish like to add pretty (?) ornaments to their tanks.   I don't remember seeing many fluorescent skulls, treasure chests, or ruined castles in India, but did come across these.  Needless to say they will never see water, but make interesting conversation pieces on my aquarium bookshelves.

  This silver articulated fish was bought in Bombay.  Larger versions are available, up to two feet long or more.

  A small pendant, carved from stone.

   While staying at the impressive Samode Palace, near Jaipur, I met an artist and went to his house to meet his family and look at his work. His father was also an artist and had been involved in repainting the murals when the Palace was renovated.  Naturally I asked if they had any art with fish.   They hadn't, but promised to paint some especially for me, and overnight they drew the pictures above. 
I don't think my artist friends had drawn fish too often, since they didn't have much idea of what a fish's mouth, tail or gills look like - but after all Rajasthan is a desert state, where camels are much more likely to be seen than fish!
The picture on the left shows a boy catching a fish, with his father giving directions.
The picture on the right depicts a Hindu myth. I wondered what it was, and in March 2003 Parvathy Balasubramanian wrote to advise that "The picture with a human figure coming out of the fish's mouth is based on the Hindu mythological story of Lord Vishnu (Hindu God of Protection) who is supposed to have re-incarnated himself and come into this world in nine different forms at different times to fight the evil in the World. His first form, or 'avatar' as it is called, took the form of a fish - it is called the matsaya ('fish' in Sanskrit) avatar of Lord Vishnu. The other forms he is supposed to have taken are tortoise, boar, lion, and the human forms of Rama and Krishna. I think the other drawings (below) have something to do with this. You can get more information on the net if you search for Avatars of Vishnu."
...Thank you very much Parvathy!

        
I bought these four original drawings in northern India.  Again, if anyone can tell me more about what they mean, please e-mail me.

  I think children are the largest consumers of plastic in North America, but in India brightly painted hand-made wooden toys are still popular. Some of the wooden toys are very ingenious, but these are simple fish with wheels.

A metal ashtray

  A carved horn ashtray, complete with cichlid

 After a sumptuous lunch at the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel in Mysore, the souvenir shop owner was most insistent that I look inside his store.  As his "first customer of the day" I would get a "special deal". I couldn't see anything I wanted until I finally spotted this exquisite pipe with a fish head bowl and silver stem.

  A hanging brass ornament of fish with little bells

  A carving from laminated wood

     I couldn't resist this salesman in Kochi (Cochin), with his combs of carved horn.

  A nice fruit bowl, which I use to hold oddments in my fish room.

  Two more carved stone dolphin gifts

  A carved wooden bowl

       I visited bookstores all over India looking for books about fish. I saw a few British and American imports but this is the only book I found that was actually published in India:
India - The Land and the People, FISHES. By Mary Chandy, 1970 ( Fifth Reprint 1994).   National Book Trust, India.
The book contains information about fish biology, Indian fish and fisheries (mostly salt water), and a small section about home aquaria.

SRI LANKA (Ceylon)

  This is my souvenir collection from Sri Lanka

     The National Zoo in Colombo has an Aquarium, of which this sticker and fretwork plaque are reminders.

  This nice fish is made from woven grass.

   After a hot climb up and down the spectacular rock fortress of Siguriya, my friends and I stopped for refreshments at the stalls which are grouped at the bottom.  Inspection of the souvenir stands revealed no fish for sale, but one man volunteered to find some, and raced off on his bicycle.   He came back with three tired and dusty examples, and I chose this black one. We followed the man on his bicycle to the carver's workshop, where the man on the right spent a good fifteen minutes polishing up my fish until it became the beauty it is now.

Horn, carved and painted

At the National Museum in Colombo I was very pleased to come across this large format book:
A Colored Atlas of Some Vertebrates from Ceylon: Volume One: Fishes, by P.E.P Deraniyagala. The Ceylon Government Press, 1952 (Second Printing 1990).
The illustrations on the title pages of Aquarticles are taken from this book.
Illustrations are by the author, presumably even the grotesque "Schematic Fish" on the right.

I've collected fish ornaments from other places too!  See my article Fish Souvenirs Part II: Rest of the World