We slow down to watch two local women waist-deep in water, Kochupennu and Prabha, catch fish—with their bare hands. They stir up the lake-bed with their feet and then swiftly grab the fish that emerge in the muddy swirl. The chatter and laughter never stop, though, as they bob up and down in the water, slipping whatever they catch, shrimps, catfish, anything, into their pots. Today’s been a lucky day, they say. The elder woman, Kochupennu, has been catching fish with her hands for over 30 years now. But not all days are so good. “Some days we catch nothing but I am used to it. The long hours in the muddy water, even the crab bites don’t sting any longer,” she laughs and says. We leave them to their wiles and move down the lake, mesmerised by the beat of the toddy-tapper high up on a coconut tree. (He beats the stem of the inflorescence with a buffalo bone before he cuts it and lets the sap ooze out into a pot tied below it.) “Ooooie,” Jose calls out and he slithers down and readily offers to sell us a bottle of sweet, fresh toddy. The Kumbalangi village is already up and about their business long before we arrive.