I really miss the monsoon season. During that time, I’d be on a boat in the ocean with my dad, a kooky old fisherman and maybe two or three of my dad’s friends - my fishing kakis, so to speak. We’d be away from the shore where the monsoon was dangerous, and on the open sea where fish were plentiful. The boat’s a ratty old sampan kotak (or a tongkang) which is basically a large sampan or barge that is oblong-ish in shape and has a box-like room in the centre which serves as the cabin and the bridge. Underneath it is the engine room. The engine room also doubles as a toilet.

I remember when I was 6 that my dad had tossed me into the car at some ungodly hour and I woke up at about 9 am on the sampan in my jammies. He tossed a fishing rod at me and told me to catch some live bait and breakfast. The fisherman who owned the sampan stored a portable stove and wok in a little compartment at the entrance of the the engine room (which sounds fancy, but it was basically a little sliding door not even a full meter high, located below the seat of the cabin which led to a space where mechanical gears and motors were suspended in the midst of sloshing sea water. The seat of the cabin itself could be removed. He stored drinks and smaller hooks in there.) and whatever smaller fish we’d catch, he lopped the heads off, de-scaled, rubbed in a bit of salt and turmeric powder and fried on the spot. He nicknamed me ‘kitten’ in Malay, anak kucing, because I always made the fried fish disappear by the dozens.

Naturally I had to use the toilet eventually. Being the only girl on the boat and only 6 to boot, my middle class upbringing led me to naïvely think that there would some sort of sitting toilet hidden away somewhere in that sampan full of compartments. Instead, the fisherman grinned at me, passed me a plastic jug that had the top half sawed off and punched with a hole, through with a long rope with knots had been strung, and pointed in the direction of the engine room.

I knew what the half-jug was for. You’d throw it into the ocean and pull it up by the rope. You drew water with it. When the deck was particularly dry or when we needed to replenish the water in the basin for our live bait, we used it. Since I fished only with men, they tended to douse themselves with sea water when it got too hot. Some of them jumped off the boat, too. I was never properly attired for swimming so I never did any of it, sorely tempted though I always was.

Half-asleep and desperately needing to relieve myself, I climbed down into the slippery engine room, barely holding on to the slim planks that had been jutted out for easy-gripping. The rocking down there was even worse because there was barely anything to hold on to. Closed the compartment door. The engine room had no bottom, so I tossed the half-jug down and drew some water to wash up with. Did what I had to do.

Salt water chafes.

I have never used the ‘toilet’ since then whenever I rode a sampan to fish. Never. My dad, on occasion, has to, but when we’re near an island, he’d ask the fisherman to pull up close to shore. He’d wrap a thin, cotton kain pelekat or sarong around his waist, kick off his shorts and jump into the water, much shallower than the deep blue where we fish. And then, as he pooped, he’d giggle hysterically during intervals and loudly comment about how small fish were nibbling his buttocks.

Whenever we caught squid or octopus - and it does happen on occasion - it’s always a big deal for us because, sad as it may be to admit it, it’s a hefty form of entertainment. We always kept squids alive in basins that we’d replenish with sea water time and again. During the lulls in between catches, sometimes, my dad’s friend would grab the squid and somehow expertly squirt someone. An hour or so later, vengeance would be sought. They never squirted me, but they made me help them improve their aim by removing obstacles. Finally, when we got bored of the squid, we generally threw it back into the ocean having had our fill of aquatic harassment. We never usually kept the squids we caught because they were tiny. Sometimes though, we used them as bait. Just to see if we’d catch anything different.

Monsoon season is excellent for catching fish. The storms and wind cool the water down immensely, and the current becomes strong. Smaller fish hide in the corals and the big predators come out hungry, tenggiris (which I think is Spanish Mackerel) and barracudas and swordfish. We placed our stronger rods and reels at the back of the boat, attaching shiny artificial baits my dad and his friends called apollos after the brand, and let the line go for some distance before locking it place and letting the fisherman steer the boat to more resplendent waters. We always sought tenggiri whenever we trolled (as it was the tastiest) but, as I recall, the first fish I ever caught through trolling was a barracuda that was about 24 kg or so when I hit 12. It’s still the biggest fish I have ever yet caught, but someday I hope to beat that by netting myself some blue tuna. Unfortunately, with overfishing on the rise, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that within the next decade.

I fished in the swamps maybe twice, but it wasn’t during the monsoon season so there was a noticeable lack of tension in the air. I went with my male cousins on a more commercial sampan, with earthworms as bait instead of small prawns. The equally middle class boys were too grossed out by the worms to touch them, so I had to cut them up for them. This was when I was in my mid-teens, I think. When I was a little younger, my brother managed to catch a barrel full of bulus-bulus (silver whiting) using peanut shells. You’d be surprised by how stupid fish really are.

Bulus-bulus tended to be our main prize, as well as senangin (a type of threadfin fish) and ikan sebelah (a type of flatfish, either a large-toothed or eyed flounder) when we weren’t trolling for large fish. My dad would do all the threading and hooking the night prior, something he said was the base thrill of fishing for bulus-bulus because the hooks were always so fine and you had to thread several hooks to a single line. His friends made their own too, and everyone shared. You see, all three of the fish tended to hang out on the sea bed, so we had to drop our lines all the way down and jig our rods, making the sinker knock on the seabed almost as if we were asking the fish to come out of the reefs to bite on our hooks. We went through the lines my dad and his friends tied like water since they caught on the coral rock or particularly large fish managed to chomp off the hooks. More often than not, we caught these really ugly fish we called Samy Vellus because it looked like a local Indian politician. Those were a kind of gelama, I’m not sure which particularly, but they had a large round tongue and a body full of spikes which was reddish-brown with splotches. These never tasted good. There was only one ugly fish I remember my dad telling me was delicious. It was orange and looked like a flounder or a pomfret. The name escapes me now. My dad took me (and sometimes my brother) fishing in Lumut for these but somehow, as I got older, we progressed to trolling in the middle of the ocean and finally just staying on an island for a week. I guess when I got bigger, my fishing had to, too.

To me, what made me enjoy fishing apart from actually catching fish was the way the boat rocked and the breeze swept by as you laid down to nap whilst waiting for your line to sound when you caught something. In the area behind the cabin, we had space to relax and place tackle boxes and baskets filled with junk food, of which we indulgently partook. There was overwhelming sense of peace and calmness that enveloped the boat as it bobbed along in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by nothing but sky and water. It didn’t make you feel small or insignificant, but it inspired this indescribable sense of isolation, that you were completely alone but somehow you still had a connection to the world. It was a good feeling, something not many people really experience but should.

I’m spoilt now, I’m told. My mother was on a boat in the middle of the ocean when she was 6 months pregnant with me, and I caught my first fish (bulus-bulus) when I was 2. I fished all my life and ate it fresh out of the ocean. I can tell overwhelmingly how long a fish has been out of water by the look and taste, if it will rain by the position of the clouds in the sky. I can’t really enjoy bland, frozen fish (especially if it has been battered). I can’t fish in lakes or swamps because there is no enjoyment I can get from it that is greater than the salty feel of a writhing fish that has been caught with nothing but the horizon about you, with a kind of subtle electricity in the air.

Monsoon season’s coming, and unfortunately, yet another year’s gone by without me in the middle of the storm.