A Fisherman's Tale

My colleague and I had fixed lunch to catch up after the Christmas and New Years break. I found out that he had never been to the Som Tam place. Som tam (papaya salad) is an Ishan (northern) dish in Thailand, which is very popular among both locals and foreigners. Since my office is located on Phar Atit Road, one of the touristic places in Thailand, we have plenty of options for lunch and there are many places that we have not managed to explore yet.

As always we had lots to catch up with each others’ lives. He started talking about his missions (field trips) and his holiday. Then he was telling me about his uncle who owned a house in Japan. After having lived a rigorous working life, his uncle had decided to retire by a seaside in Japan. How his uncle would take him to the sea where they would spend hours fishing. His uncle could sense which parts had fish and which did not just by looking at the water. After a good catch, they would enjoy a nice barbecue by the sea. Since the uncle was from a family of fishermen, fishing was in his blood and he spent most of his day on his boat. His wife was never worried about him; she knew that he would always come back.

One of such days, he took his boat and cleaned it carefully. Then he went to the sea. But unlike other days, he did not come back that day. Hours after dark when there was no sign of him, the wife started getting worried. She inquired around the neighborhood but no one had seen him. His boat was not there in the shed either, meaning he was still on the sea. Police were called and they started a search. They found his boat floating in the sea and a half broken fishing rod. They searched the water nearby but could not find him. As much as he loved being on the sea, he had now become a part of the sea.

After hearing this story the first thing that came to my mind was: all this time he was the one catching fish and now the fish had caught him.