He works from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. every day. In pitch darkness, he carries baskets of fish on his head from boats in Kasimedu harbor to the auction house, navigating slimy and damp pathways littered with fish scales and wet with seawater. It's a third of a mile each way. He makes the trip 40 or 50 times during his shift for the daily auction, which begins at 4 a.m.
Pavadairayan, who is 60 years old and goes by one name, is one of hundreds of workers known as basket men. It's a tough job. Each basket weighs about 35 pounds. Their bosses don't trust them: "If supervisors think that fish are missing, they can dock your pay and fine you several thousands of rupees. Basket men have few rights," he says.
They earn about $5 a day.
Despite the hardships, Pavadairayan says he loves the job because the rest of the day is his own. He spends his mornings sleeping and lounging.
"Many other basket men go out and do other odd jobs," he says. "But I always refuse. This money is enough for me. Sleeping with a full belly under open skies, a salt sea breeze fanning your face: that's what I call heaven."
A smuggler's story
Pavadairayan is one of around 30,000 people who are part of the bustling scene at the Kasimedu harbor in the southern Indian city of Chennai. In addition to basket men, there are fishermen, auctioneers, fish hawkers and wholesalers, transport workers, ice suppliers. The harbor itself is overcrowded, built for fewer than 600 boats and now estimated to be serving over 1,000.
They have stories to tell about their labors and their lives. Their experiences testify to the struggles they face — and to their undying love for the sea.
Nandu Kumar, who is 65, says he used to be a smuggler.
Dressed in a grey shirt and a checkered lungi (a traditional garment men wear, made of light cotton and wrapped around the waist), Kumar is seated on an overturned boat on the harbor's sandy shores. In the pale light of early dawn, he looks vulnerable, almost fragile, with a wispy white beard and contemplative eyes.
He's always worked as a fisherman. But in the early '80s, desperate to make a living, he says he'd help smuggle in imported alcohol and cigarettes on his boat. This was the time when India imposed steep customs duties and limits on consumer-goods imports. Smuggling was profitable until 1991, when economic reforms began taking effect.
So Kumar gave up on his illegal cargo and went back to battling the sea for fish.
Years later, in December 2010, tragedy struck., Kumar says. His daughter's husband, who drank heavily, toppled off his boat and drowned. "This fishing life — it's harshest on the body," Kumar says. "Your shoulders ache all the time. Sometimes, alcohol is the only way you can cope and forget the pain."
His daughter struggled to come to terms with her loss. Months later, she took her life, ingesting the pesticide she had bought to weed the garden.
After his daughter's death, Kumar took in her infant daughter and son — and soon realized that spending weeks at sea was no longer practical. Fishing was a gamble. A group of ten fishermen would go out to sea for three weeks or months in a boat, and sometimes, come back empty-handed. Kumar needed a steady income to care for his grandchildren. "With the support of my two sons, I decided to start selling fish," he says.
Today, he runs a shop at the harbor and does brisk business.
A risky business
Members of fishing communities in Kasimedu are well aware of the risky nature of the business, says Bhagat Singh, a researcher, social worker and member of the Coastal People Rights Movement, a grassroots campaign led by fishing and indigenous communities to protect their traditional marine livelihoods against corporate displacement and unregulated development.
Singh's own father was a fisherman, and he knows the community well. ""It's feast or famine. That is the rhythm of life at the harbor. For workers and fishermen here, earning a living is hard enough. One bad season, one poor catch, or one spell of illness can be enough to push a family into dire poverty. There are no safety nets. Worse, they have little access to government support and their labor remains largely invisible, " he says.
On an average, the fisherman at Kasimedu earn around $200 a month, he says — if they have good catches. The precariousness of the job is a reason why the younger generation seeks out more reliable employment. But that need for independence that is so inherent to their personalities eventually surfaces, he says. "Many of my friends are not happy in corporate jobs or in related industries. Eventually, they do find their way back fishing again, and many make this career change mid-life."
Nizamuddin, 25, belongs to the younger generation of fishermen. He's also the only man in the entire harbor wearing a wet suit. When he's not out fishing, he helps repair nets, dock boats and haul fish from the hold to pass onto the basket men.
The power of the sea
He is aware that young people his age are conspicuously absent from Kasimedu, but he's always embraced his job. "It's a hard life but I wasn't very good at studying," he says. "This is the only work I know and it has helped my family survive." He's put two older brothers through school and college. They now have good jobs, he says, but he's never regretted his own career choice.
The fisherman-turned-fish vendor Kumar knows all too well that the seas hold power over those who've worked there. "It's like your mother's lap. You may travel far and wide, and don't need it anymore, but you will return for the warmth and comfort it gives you," he says.
Every now and then, in the early hours of the morning, Kumar sits in the stillness to watch the fishermen return with their catch and feels a pang of longing. "Life on a boat is hard, but it is also exhilarating," he says. "There are moments when you never know what will happen next. I quite miss that."
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t
For stories about life in our changing world, subscribe to NPR's Global Health newsletter.
Copyright 2026 NPR