IT is near impossible for humans to be unaffected by an encounter with molluscs. Those of us who retain only a dim memory of high-school taxonomy might not even know that humans have been in the company of molluscs for centuries. The phylum Mollusca is, after all, a very broad category and encompasses over 85,000 species of invertebrates. Of these, jellyfish and cephalopods such as octopuses and squids might be more obscure, but almost everyone has seen a shell, either split open into two identical sets (as in bivalves) or as a twist of colour and calcium around a cavity (as in gastropods).
Molluscs are found in freshwater systems, seas and even oceans, and there is many a molluscan trace encountered in contemporary everyday life that makes it hard to ignore. In India, molluscs are found amidst human communities across social hierarchies, geographies and cultures. An example of a relatively inexpensive decorative shell, although high on its beauty quotient, is the Melo melo , a smooth creamy shell commonly known as the “beggar’s bowl”. On a research trip to the Palk Bay in 2016, this writer met a Hindu mendicant in Pattukottai, in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, who proudly showed her a handsome specimen of this shell. He had bought it for Rs.80 after making a special visit by bus to Kilakarai, over 150 kilometres from Pattukottai.
Kilakarai, in present-day Ramanathapuram district, has been the historical hub of trade in many marine products and bivalve and gastropod shells. Here, and in the temple town of Rameswaram, molluscan presence continues to turn the wheels of its merchants’ fortunes.
The meaning of molluscan presence in our lives is multifold. They can be found tied around the necks of cows; hanging from shops, transport vehicles and above thresholds of homes; and braided with ropes and other ritual objects (including aloe vera, coconuts, sacred threads). Usually marine gastropod shells (mostly smaller Turbinella pyrum , or the Murex varieties, mostly Chicoreus ramosus and cowries), they are intended to dispel evil and are emblematic of multiple gods, goddesses, spirits and their mystical and spiritual powers.
At the higher end of molluscan prestige objects are pearls produced by pearl oysters, rare and unusual shells such as the highly valued valampuri , or sinistral, variety of sacred chanks or sacred conch. It is known in Sanskrit as shankkh , and in Tamil as changgu or chankku. British records refer to this animal as the sacred chank. But there is some confusion whether the common name is merely “the Indian conch or chank” to distinguish it from the sacrosanct valampuri variety owned by some temples and monasteries across the world.
How commodities or things embody value and meaning has been at the heart of anthropological enquiry. Is the sacred chank merely an economic commodity, a cultural object, an ecological entity or a whole that is more than the sum of its parts? We know that throughout human history, marine animals such as the one we call Turbinella pyrum have shared deep bonds with humans, dictated human fortunes, and wielded tremendous influence on human behaviour or agency.
In the whole world, there was no other place where this chank was present in such abundance as in the seabeds of the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar along the coastal areas of present-day Tamil Nadu and the Northern Province of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).
The fisheries for these animals were aimed at procuring the shell of this animal; the meat was consumed by diver communities. These fisheries supplied chank far and wide, across various parts of the subcontinent for over two millennia, alternating with a fishery for pearls whose fame was worldwide. The fishery was largely state-controlled since colonial times and only recently moved into the hands of licensed fishers.
However, over the last few decades chank are not collected in as much abundance as before. Fishers attribute this to multiple causes, the primary one being fishing by destructive bottom trawling.
The importance of molluscs has not diminished despite significant shifts in cultural modes among people. Today, the Gulf of Mannar is one of the last remaining sites for the sacred chank. The life of the mollusc underwater is a story for another day; equally little is known about the physical and transformative journey of the chank when it encounters a diver. Chank has to be literally hunted down by skilled breath-hold divers who have tricks and skills to find their quarry. Once safely secured in the diver’s bag, a series of transformations await the mollusc on land.
Cultural imprint The life of the chank above water begins with the death of the animal. Cooked, consumed or chilled for a distant food market, it leaves lasting cultural imprints on its consumers. Many other stages of transformation are bestowed on the chank. The animal itself is divided into its parts, with shell, flesh and foot (the operculum, a calcareous lid that covers the opening of the shell when the animal retracts into it) moving along different economic chains.
This photoessay captures some moments of this writer’s journey with the chank as it changes shape and is transformed at the hands of humans. We also witnessed the ways in which chanks might be seen as forcing certain skills among those who labour over its transformation, their peculiar instruments and working conditions, and the ways in which the chank might create human fortunes and contribute to the history of places and people.
Aarthi Sridhar is Trustee and Programme Head, Dakshin Foundation and doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Umeed Mistry is an award-winning photographer and Staff Instructor of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors.
(For a full collection of photoessays on marine life in the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar, write to aarthi77@gmail.com for a copy of the book Knowing the Palk Bay produced with support from the Coastal and Marine Protected Areas (CMPA) project of GiZ India.)
