Badri Narayan occupies a unique position in contemporary Indian letters—a social scientist whose precision meets the quiet intensity of a poet. Having earned the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2022 for Tumdi Ke Sabda, Narayan has consistently legitimised folk traditions as rigorous academic data. In his poignant poem Machhalī (Fish), the drying of a village pond in Manikpur becomes far more than an ecological event—it unfolds as an elegy for a vanishing world where memory, nature, and human destiny intertwine.
At the heart of the poem lies a blue fish, once a living companion to the speaker, whose mysterious disappearance sets in motion a chain of imagined fates stretching from the intimate waters of the pond to the distant, uncertain palm of a fisherman. The poem opens with deceptive simplicity: "It grieved me to learn that the pond in Manikpur had dried up." This plainness carries profound tragedy—not private grief but collective awareness of loss.
The poet transforms the fish from mere creature into intimate presence: "with whom I had struck up a fine friendship." When the pond dries, the question is not only about water but about the breaking of that bond. The poem proceeds not as linear narrative but as a chain of possibilities. Beginning with "Some say that...", it presents many possible fates: she turned to vapour, fell into another pond, landed in a wealthy Seth's possession, reached the adornment casket of the nation's First Lady, or became part of a trafficker's scheme.
The sudden appearance of place names—Ghaziabad, Noida, Nashik, Suriname—signals modern migration and displacement. Human beings "run off" to these places; the fish too drifts toward some unknown destination. Here the fish becomes a symbol of displaced existence itself.
The poem reaches its most moving turn when a boy's voice breaks in—"No! No!"—the first moment of certainty. The fish fell into a fisherman's palm and was transformed into a girl who still lives in Pranpur village, scaling rohu from some other pond and grinding mustard masala to season it. This transformation is crucial: the fish's life does not end; it enters a new form of existence connected to labour, life, and continuity.
Multiple Readings
Ecologically, the poem critiques the broken relationship between humanity and nature. The drying pond signals wider ecological disruption caused by capitalist expansion. The fish's disappearance creates an "ecological silence"—not merely the absence of one creature but the collapse of an entire system. The poem challenges anthropocentric perspectives, presenting the fish as an intimate being rather than mere "other."
From a feminist perspective, the fish's transformation into a girl who "lives for her fisherman" raises essential questions. The girl's labour—"scaling rohu" and "grinding mustard masala"—brings into view domestic work often rendered invisible. Her story is never told in her own voice; she remains a "narrated" existence. Yet within this oppression, feminist analysis also sees agency: sustaining life through labour points to a life-force that remains active even within oppressive structures.
Through a postcolonial lens, the sudden geography from Manikpur to Suriname points to the history of indentured labour migration under colonialism. The fish becomes the metaphor for the subaltern who is structurally denied the permission to speak. Her story is always told through someone else—"some say," "a boy said"—confirming that her voice is imprisoned within mediation.
Existentially, the repeated question "Where has she gone?" embodies the anxiety of meaninglessness. The chain of possible destinations reveals no single definite truth but many possible truths, none final. This recalls Camus's concept of the absurd—human beings seeking meaning in a world that is itself indifferent. The fish's transformation into a girl represents an attempt at "meaning-making," yet even this new identity signals not freedom but new bondage.
In moral philosophy, drawing on Emmanuel Levinas, the fish's absence itself becomes a moral presence. The poet's unceasing question expresses the restlessness that arises when the "other" is no longer before us. Responsibility to the other does not end with absence—rather, absence makes moral responsibility more intense. Remembering the fish, asking about her, refusing to accept her absence—these acts become forms of moral resistance.
Throughout the poem, questioning remains the major device. The repeated question "Where has she gone?" draws the reader into an instability where no answer is final. This uncertainty is the poem's strength, acquainting us with dimensions of reality usually overlooked.
From the original text of Machhalī, it becomes clear that the poem is not simply the story of a dried pond and a lost fish. It is a poetic structure of complex interconnections between memory, displacement, power, capital, violence, and rebirth. Badri Narayan, through extremely ordinary language and images, creates a multi-layered experience in which the local and the global, reality and imagination, the personal and the collective all coexist.
The fish is not a simple creature but that "other" who takes us beyond our moral limits and teaches us that true humanity lies in remaining constantly alert to the suffering, absence, and silence of that other. The poet's unceasing question—"Where has she gone?"—is ultimately a moral summons that stands against the insensitivity of our time, reminding us that as long as we keep asking this question, our moral consciousness will remain alive.
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*Professor & former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper
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