India, Oct. 26 -- Balanced uneasily on a motorbike, the trio had driven 20 km from Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh. They were ready to brave mud and mosquitoes on a Sunday afternoon in the remote backwaters of Siswan Dam. They were migrants from the Hindi heartland states and eking out a living as gardeners at PEC. They had come armed with the desire of wiling away their time by gambling with teeny-weeny lives. Monsoons had created numerous pools of tea-brown water. In them were marooned fishes, not more than a few inches long and known as Striped Dwarf fish (Mystus vittatus). The three musketeers were baiting them with earthworms dangled on improvised fishing lines, sans rods. But how many hooked? They landed a few after a sweaty vigil under the sultry sun and cursed the cards chance had dealt them. They could well have been playing cards in the shade pool of a mango tree back at PEC. The finger fishes would be lean on flesh and dense in spines. The trio's taste buds would be under challenge later that night. The catch would be fried and downed with stiff liquor pegs, as is the vaunt of plebeian anglers. "Sir, it is 'juaa' (a gamble). The water is muddy and we see nothing of what goes on under. We move from pool to pool. If lucky, we land 20-25 fish. On other Sundays, when the fish don't bite or have been hooked by fishermen before us, the catch is 7-8. But it is time well spent, what else do we do on a Sunday? Fishing is a novelty for us," a gardener told me with a deadpan look on his coffee-tan face while character assassinating the targets as "cunning as foxes". After pulling out the fish, the gardeners let them bounce and writhe till they died 30 minutes later. Streaks of blood tainted the earth from mouths tempted and torn by hooks. One fish went real still, too soon, and I prodded it. It jerked to life and arched like a taut rainbow in a last, defiant shake of the fist against fate....