Black clouds swirl and form a dark bunch covering the lake. The hills grow hazy as a translucent sheet of rain suddenly descends. The wind whistles through the chipped bamboo poles which seem to float on weeds.Nema Salaam shouts across the water and above the wind to her husband: "Anchor the chicken coop or it will float away." Her husband, Mani, canoes across to the 6 ft by 4 ft bed of weeds that houses the pen and stabs the water around it with three 10 ft poles, securing it to the lake's soft, silted bottom.When you are living on the Loktak lake in Manipur, raising poultry is not an easy proposition. But these are minor irritants for people like Nema and Mani, who are among the 3,000 or so Nagamis (fisherfolk) living on Loktak's phoomdis, or floating islands weeds and decaying vegetation held together by suspended silt.Hazards lurk behind every dark cloud. If an anchor came unstuck in a storm, the very house could end up anywhere on the 300 sq km lake. A veritable nightmare for the postman, but also a bit of a bother for the occupants. "We have to drag the phoomdi all the way back to its original moorings then," says Mani.Phoomdis cover about two-thirds of Loktak's surface. The two metre thick phoomdis are buoyant enough to support bamboo hutments. But building a house on them can be tricky.First you have to find the right phoomdi; the things to look out for are the thickness of the weeds (the thicker the better) and the amount of soil content (the lesser the better). Once you locate a seller, you can buy a piece from his property for about Rs 100 per 1,000 sq ft..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Drag your property to a location of your choice and build a bamboo structure on it. Then again, you could simply buy a readymade hut for Rs 3,000 and tow it to an address of your choosing."A phoomdi lasts about three years. Then the weeds start decaying and it begins to gets thinner," says a fisherman. A salient rule for the lake dwellers: no overcrowded huts. A dozen or so guests on a 30 ft by 30 ft phoomdi and the party would probably have to continue at the bottom of the lake.The two-metre thick phoomdis, or floating mats of soil and weeds, are buoyant enough to support people and bamboo hutments.Food is no problem for the people because the shopping mall is everywhere around you.Loktak has a staggering array of flora and fauna and, most importantly, fish. Very little has changed in the methods employed for fishing at Loktak. Fishermen cut weed rings in early winter and keep them floating in the shallower parts of the lake.Attracted by the higher temperatures and the ready availability of food there, fish assemble beneath these manmade phoomdis.When the phoomdi is 'ripe' for 'harvest', the fishermen churn the sediment on the lake bed with bamboo poles even as the ring is surrounded by a net so that the fish cannot escape. The mud clogs the gills of the fish and as they come gasping to the surface, dip nets are thrown in to catch them.But amid Loktak's idyllic environs, a disturbing natural drama is being played out. In the southern waters of the lake floats the 40 sq km phoomdi that is Keibul Lamjao, the world's only floating national park and home to the brow-antler deer.The deer have shown remarkable adaptive instincts, even changing the morphology of their hooves to walk on the infirm surface of their habitat. But that has not saved them from man's rapaciousness. Today, only a 100 or so of the species survive. And it does not seem likely that things at Loktak will improve either. The Loktak hydro-electric power plant has already raised the water level of the lake. For years used to the shallow-water technique of phoom fishing, fishermen are now forced to use pesticides to catch fish because their bamboo poles don't reach the bottom of the lake.What is more, if work on the Loktak Multipurpose Project (for irrigation and electricity generation) continues as planned, 20 species of aquatic plants could be lost forever, according to environmentalists. It could also mean, sadly, that lake dwellers like Nema and Mani would have to move to firmer terrain, leaving nature's water bed forever.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Sep 1, 1997--- ENDS ---
