Under the plastic-covered roofs of Kolkata's wet markets, people gather around hilsa with the focus usually reserved for precious things. They inspect the curve of its belly, press the flesh gently, ask where it came from, and debate whether it is worth the price.

For Bengalis, hilsa has always been more than fish.

Its place in the region's imagination goes back centuries. The fish appears inPrakritapaingala, a medieval Prakrit text written around 600 years ago. One verse describes an ideal meal of hot rice, ghee, hilsa, jute leaves and warm milk, a small detail that reveals just how deeply the fish was woven into everyday life.

Six centuries later, the devotion remains much the same.

I first understood this obsession through my grandfather.

He came to Bengal from Chittagong — then part of undivided Bengal, now in Bangladesh.

For him, hilsa was never a seasonal luxury or an expensive market purchase. It was simply life as he had known it.

He often spoke of the monsoons back home, when rivers swelled and turned restless, and hilsa moved through them in abundance. In his stories, men returned from the river carrying two fish in each hand — not as trophies, but as routine. The fish belonged to the river the way rain belonged to the season.

In those days, hilsa was cooked the way river communities cook what they know intimately: nothing was wasted.

The belly went into a light gravy with chilli paste. The roe was fried crisp. The oil released from the........

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