..very simple folks, and they are just now singing that, “We are fishermen and we have to catch the fishes, and then the ladies have to take them to the market.” Now, the whole night the fishermen go on their boats and bring the fishes, and the ladies then, in the morning, are ready with all this kind of dress that they wear. They are all very nice-looking, healthy women because they live in the water, you see, of the sea. Water is very good. And then they go and sell these things - so the men are sleeping nicely after that; they come back home and sleep in - then they go back home by about ten o’clock. The fishing market is over; you can’t get any fishes. Only fresh fishes, if you have to go, you must go early in the morning from seven to eight or nine at the most, and all the fishes are over. Then they wash off everything and go away. So that is what they are describing that, “We have worked very hard and got these fishes for you; now you’d better go and sell them.” So they are saying, “We are working in the shores, near the shores of Bombay.” That’s Mumbai.
You can understand why Christ chose the fishermen, because they are always having their foot-soaking, you know. Very simple people, and very nimble. You see them how they are not stiff at all, the way they are very, very nimble people, extremely nimble. Just see how they are dancing. Our children cannot be that. They are very, very light in their movement. To go on small boats for sea-fishing is a very difficult task, but they have been living like this. And sometimes there are songs about the wife waiting for her husband to come back, and it is sometimes she finds that it’s full of clouds and rain, storms; it’s all description of that. They have a typical style of music.
H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Talk after Fishermen’s Dance, Alibag, Maharashtra, 29/12/91
