New Delhi, Jan. 10 -- Seafood for me is hearth and health: a nod to my seafaring ancestors, childhood memories, family traditions-and a reminder of cardiovascular glitches.

I cook fish often at home, limited only by the soaring cost of family favourites like white pomfret and surmai or kingfish. When I eat out, I inevitably gravitate towards fish because it is healthy and its freshness is easy to discern, unlike other meats and even vegetables.

I spent the last week of 2025 in Mumbai, as I always do, and while in that heaving, smoggy city of dreams and nightmares, I ate all the fish I could. It would be a travesty not to, never mind the increasingly turbid and contaminated Arabian Sea.

I don't worry too much about the toxicity of the f...