The Faithful and the Fish

• By RK Online Desk
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• 03 Apr 2026

Written in 1988, “The Faithful and the Fish” returns us to a Kashmir where rivers breathed freely and the forests still whispered their old stories. Today, with the Valley’s environment under strain, its message feels almost prophetic. This is a gentle invitation to the younger generation to rediscover their bond with the land, to protect the waters and ranges that define Kashmir’s spirit. The story reminds us that stewardship begins not with grand gestures, but with simple acts of care — for in these mountains, even a single river can hold the memory of an entire people.

The Faithful and the Fish

Shiv Kunal Verma

Dreams are always dreamt in black and white, or so they say; but the images of the swirling water exploding in thick grained vapour as the river smashed against the rocks needed no colour. The butterflies, however, were a different cup of tea... Jazebels, lacewings, and peacocks disappeared into the rising vapours of the river. Skimming the water but never really touching the surface, and then somewhere along the line, the flitting images were no longer butterflies but finely honed pheasant feathers which looked like flies. And the trout was exploding out of the water, twisting and turning against the current as the silken dancing line shed its molecules of water. The fish tore through the rapids, past and over the rocks, into the depths of a pool under the shadow of a large walnut tree...

Dreams are silent. But here the water was beating its own rhythm, the music keeping time with the present which was more than just a persuasive illusion. And then the world was like a spinning top which seemed to slow down abruptly, and life was again as natural as the night which enveloped the countryside.

The car had stopped under a large willow tree and the big man who everyone called the Colonel was instantly awake. The headlights were off and through the side windows he could see the stars twinkling shyly. But they were fading fast, for towards the east dawn was breaking, throwing shades of amber grey over the valley. It would still be more than an hour before the sun came up. Below the road, to his right, the roar of the Bhringi was deafening, and the high water mark of the previous evening was visible despite the dull light, the exposed rocks looking darker than others from the wetness of the river. With the arrival of the sun over the adjacent ridges, the river would rise again. Pulling out an old army vintage thermos, the type which most military men seem to carry with them wherever they go, the Colonel cupped his big hands against the warm flask before carefully unscrewing the top and taking a gulp of hot coffee.

The liquid seemed to burn its way into his stomach and he rubbed the back of his hand against his mustache. He could see Basheer, the head shikari, treading his way through the rocky river-bed towards him, his hands tucked away inside the folds of his loose phiran, which left the two sleeves hanging by his sides. His face was weather beaten and wrinkled, with a neatly trimmed beard which had turned white over the last few years. In the half light of the morning, his beard was faintly outlined, the creases of time on his face were not. But the Colonel didn’t need to see his face to know that the shikari would have his brow crinkled in apprehension, and the lines would only relax after the first few fish were in the bag. And if it was a particularly good day, the lines on old Basheer’s face would shift dramatically from his forehead to the corner of his eyes, for in his book man was created and evolved only to be a fisherman. “Correction,” smiled the Colonel to himself, “a successful fisherman.”

He propped the flask on the seat of the car beside him, carefully wedging it between his packed lunch and spare set of clothes. The driver had the fishing rods out of their case and he was leaning against the rear of the car waiting for Basheer to cover the stony ground between them. Still inside the car, the Colonel took out his box of flies. He lingered for a moment, drinking in the fresh morning air through his nostrils, breathing hard, almost snorting in a yogic fashion. He counted each sharp intake of air, reached eight and then switched on the small overhead light. The loaded spring in the lid popped open the small metal container with a barely audible click. Stuck neatly in rows were the flies. The colour and the beauty of each hook dressed in an assortment of feathers took his breath away as it always did no matter how many times he looked at them. He was the General, and the flies were his faithful soldiers, these little beauties, and he lovingly ran his fingers through the rank and file.

He smiled softly as he thought of the images from his dream and tried to recapture the vividness of it all by screwing his eyes shut but it was no use. He had selected the first two hooks when Basheer, his face a picture of grim anticipation, opened the car door, the yellow light throwing a shadow on the old man’s face. The shikaris ‘salaam valekum’ was hardly more than a mumble and the Colonel nodded his head and replied with the mandatory ‘valekum salaam’. For years, or was it decades, this was their morning routine, and it was unlikely that the shikari would say another word to him till well after sunrise. And yet they communicated with each other as few men could, a glance, a nod, a shake of the head. After all, they were two fishermen, one the guide, the other the executioner.

Taking the rod from the driver, Basheer assembled it while he studied the river. The water now looked gray in the morning light, with millions of little bubbles breaking into churning white foam around the rocks through which the Bhringi weaved its course. Under his white knitted skull-cap, his lean and weathered face had surveyed the river year after year and now his forehead was even more wrinkled for he was worried. For six days he and the Colonel had stalked and fished the many pools, and though they had caught a few small fish all under a pound, the big one had eluded them.

Basheer knew that fish well. It had a dull brown scar near its tail and every day when there was no one fishing the beat, the fish seemed to be everywhere at once, flapping its body clear of the water as it chased after minnows from one pool to another. Of all the shikaris in Kashmir, old Basheer was perhaps the best, and the Colonel handled the rod with an expertise which put him in the highest class of anglers to have ever fished the Bhringi. Though he had his eye partly on the baksheesh which swelled with some subtle flattery, not for nothing did he say the Colonel was the best fly fisherman after god. And yet, between the two of them, Scar Tail had out foxed-them day after day.

“There’s little Mobbin”, said the Colonel who had chosen his remaining flies and was sticking them to his olive green hat, and Basheer looked up to see the boy hop nimbly from one rock to another, his crude bamboo rod functioning as a balancing stick for the moment, his pink plastic shoes dancing from rock to rock like those of a ballerina. “You could make a shikari out of him,” the Colonel spoke slowly for Basheer to understand him. He spoke no Kashmiri and his years in the Army had taught him only a splattering of Urdu. Basheer always spoke to him in English, resisting any effort from the Colonel to switch to the vernacular.

The shikari watched the boy as he reached his usual spot across the river where he squatted on a rock, his bamboo stick a make belief fishing rod. The Colonel was watching and he waved and yelled a hello which could never have carried over the roar of the water. Then he was walking towards the river and Basheer followed, and within minutes they were fishing the stream again, little Mobbin forgotten as they concentrated on the swirling waters which crept up to their ankles, and then to their knees as their silken line glided from one corner of the river to another, sometimes the cast high and soft, sometimes fast and driven against the slight morning breeze which kissed the exposed cheeks but all the time searching, searching for Scar Tail, searching for the big fish.

Once the Colonel had got his timing right, he slowed down to a steady rhythm, his huge brown hands and neck getting redder as the sun began to climb into the sky. The icy cold water felt nice and comfortable despite the current that tugged and pushed at their legs, but the shivering agony of the morning was thankfully behind them. Up and down the beat they went, the flies skimming past wooden bridges and groves of walnut and chinar trees, past paddy fields where women worked bent double with scarves tied tightly around their heads and small improvised mills which were run by the force of the water cut away in small channels from the Bhringi. Three small trout, each slightly larger than his hand were hooked and quickly returned to the water in the first one hour. The bigger fish were not yet biting and in any case the fish the Colonel wanted was Scar Tail, the trout that was as long as his arm. Basheer agreed with his own guess, it weighed more than eight pounds.

The Colonel changed yet another fly and the line flipped out with a deft movement of the wrist, the No. 2 Bottle-green settling on the fast moving water only to disappear in the white foam. His other hand reeled in the line, the tip of the rod perfectly balanced to feel the slightest tug of an inquisitive fish. Nothing. Again the line floated out, and then again, and again. I just have to get that fish, he said to himself. He looked across the river to where Mobbin sat with his bamboo pole, a tiny speck in the distance and the big man smiled.

He was nicely into his rhythm now. Almost on cue, the fish began to bite. A few big ones, all in the region of a pound, maybe a pound-and-a-half, began to gobble at the fly. The Colonel didn’t spend too much time landing them, expertly reeling them in, sometimes not giving enough line and loosing the fish. Basheer had never seen him this impatient, but he knew what the Colonel was up to. He didn’t want any of the smaller fish to thrash around excessively. That would have scared off Scar Tail, and today he wasn’t going to make any mistakes. Even as the feeding frenzy abated, five fish were in the bag, leaving room for just one more. In addition, half a dozen trout had already been released.     

In the afternoon, tired and wet, they returned to the car and the Colonel waded through the river to sit with Mobbin to share his lunch. The boy kept his make believe rod out over the water but there was no line and he accepted the sandwich the big man offered. It was a daily ritual and the Colonel sat there eating his lunch without talking, listening to the roar of the river. He looked at the red and yellow buttercups, the cluster of white daisies and the thorny thistles and thought about the ibis bill.

The couple, both in their mid-thirties, had walked into the houseboat, their leather soled boots creaking loudly on the wooden floors, and asked for the Colonel. Dressed identically in sleeveless khakhi jackets over olive green military fatigues with notebooks tucked into their hip pockets, their broad brimmed hats, field glasses and cameras made them look like prototypes of an advertisement from ‘The Birdwatcher’. The man had stepped forward when the Colonel appeared, “I’m Stevens from the National Geographic and this is my associate, Sarah Robins. They said you could help us. We’re looking for a bird. It’s very rare, and I wondered if you may have seen it.” The Colonel had smiled at Stevens when he crooked his finger, pointing downwards from his already elongated nose and described the ibis bill. “You really couldn’t have missed it if you saw it on one of your fishing trips, it has a black inverted bean on its chest, like a bib, you know. Once we locate them, the birds can be caught. They really are quite valuable.”

The Colonel was quickly into his ‘Blimp’ routine, or at least that’s what his daughter called it. A slight upward sweep of his mustaches and then he was at his social best, radiating a charm which never failed to work. Careful to address the woman more often than the man, he probed gently for more details as tea was brought and then served in royal Kashmiri style.

Sarah was reaching for her notebook from where she extracted a US Air Force map of the area, the kind which usually were classified ‘SECRET’ by the government. “We have a week to trap the ibis bill. Everyone we spoke to seemed certain that you would be the best person to contact. You see, we sent you a few fax messages from Washington, but we were told you had already left for the Valley...”

The map was now spread out between them. Stevens had produced a pair of reading glasses which were now perched on the bridge of his nose, and he was looking intently at the Colonel. “You see, we’ve narrowed down the distribution area to roughly around here,” he drew an imaginary circle with his finger around the area of the Bhringhi, “but it’s an awfully big area...”

The Colonel studied the map, “How many days did you say...”  

“Six... That’s not counting today.” Sarah caught the quick look, and she laughed, “Yes, I guess you can say we are quite desperate...” Sarah reminded him of his daughter. And her ‘but daddy how can you kill the trout’ routine. Yet she would pick the spine clean on the dining table, her earlier squeamishness forgotten. ‘You could have added a bit of pepper you know. It tastes better that way.’

The Colonel chewed his sandwich and looked at the river. No Mr Stevens, I’m sorry but I’ve never seen the ibis bill. Yes, of course, I’ll keep an eye out for them and will telephone you the moment I have any information. No, no trouble at all. in fact, I’d be delighted to help you if I could. Thank you very much.”Here Mobbin, have an apple.” The Colonel got to his feet, his wet boots and trousers squelching as he walked. “Bye Mobbin, maybe I’ll see you next year.”

The boy watched the Colonel cross the river and Basheer joined him and they started fishing again. Mobbin finished the apple and threw the core into the river. He watched it bob a couple of times and then it was gone. He could never understand the Colonel, but he knew the big man wouldn’t be there tomorrow for the fishing season would be officially closed. He turned and and examined the thin nylon rope which was jammed under a large stone. Without shifting his position, he tugged at the line and felt the weight at the other end.

The sun was setting when the Colonel stopped his relentless search for trout. Basheer was looking more and more depressed, for no fish had even snipped at the flies. He stood with Naseem who yawned after having slept curled up in the back of the car the entire day. He was looking forward to getting back to Srinagar but that was three hours away.

The Colonel walked along the Bhringi, stooping to collect some daisies which he proceeded to stick in his cap, unhooking the flies at the same time. He reached a cliff and he whistled loudly. He was answered immediately, and a small white bird hopped onto a rock in the fast flowing stream, his inverted black bean-like bib and inverted beak prominent in the last rays of the sun. The bird preened itself and whistled again, and the Colonel smiled a sad smile. How long would it be before Stevens got here, he wondered. “You owe me old son,” he muttered and then began to walk back to the car. He waved to Mobbin who waved back.

The boy watched them get into the car, Basheer joining the Colonel at the back. He would get off at the village down the road. Both he and the Colonel were looking tired, but they both knew they had done all they could to catch Scar Tail. “Beeg fish out there,” Basheer struggled with his English,” next year...Inshallah...” and he struck upwards with an imaginary rod. Then the car was gone and little Mobbin sat quite still, waiting till the drone of the engine was swallowed by the Bhringi.

The boy then got to his feet, throwing his bamboo rod into the water. It spun around a couple of times and then disappeared. Mobbin had cleared the nylon rope from under the rock and he was pulling with all his strength. He half ran into the river and his groping fingers untied a knot in the water. Then, his little legs trembling with the effort, he lifted Scar Tail up and looked at the big, pulsating fish. The golden eyes of the trout seemed to flash with fire and his speckled greenish body glinted in the remaining light.

After a few seconds, Mobbin carefully lowered the fish into the water, supporting it in his trembling hands. Then, with a sharp twist of its tail, the fish was gone. Across the valley, the haunting cry of the mullahs echoed over the sound of the river calling the faithful to prayer.

Shiv Kunal Verma is a writer and filmmaker whose roots and early professional years in Kashmir shaped a lifelong bond with India’s mountains, rivers and frontiers. His work blends history with the textures of place, people and memory, capturing the spirit of landscapes that have defined generations. He is also the founder of the Fortress India movement, inviting citizens everywhere to help safeguard the country’s fragile natural and cultural heritage.

www.fortressindia.in/register

Atanu Roy’s evocative sketch captures the timeless tension between man, river and trout, echoing the spirit of “The Faithful and the Fish.” Rendered in his signature textured style, the artwork brings Kashmir’s forests and cold mountain waters alive in a single moment of stillness and struggle.