The tide decides everything in Chellanam, including what time you are allowed to have an opinion. Boats leave when the water says so and come back the same way, and the fish market that assembles on the sand exists for roughly ninety minutes a day.

The beach at first light
First light on the beach at Chellanam, twenty minutes before the boats land.Photograph by Ajith M

I came for the seawall and stayed for the auction. The seawall is the story everyone expects — granite blocks, monsoon breach, a village that has moved its front row of houses twice in a decade. The auction is the story nobody writes down.

Ice being broken on the sand
Ice arrives before the boats do.
The morning catch
Sardine, mostly. Some days nothing but sardine.
A buyer waiting
Buyers stand in the same spots every morning.
The market assembles, transacts and disperses in under two hours, six days a week.Photographs by Ajith M

Prices are called in a shorthand that took me three mornings to half-follow and a fourth to give up on. What I could follow was the order: the man who fixed the net gets paid before the man who owns the boat.