Coconut Land - God's Own Country?

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I have been staying at the Old Harbour Hotel in Fort Kochi. It is, as the name suggests, close to the old harbour and when I go down that way the first things that catch my eyes are the giant Chinese Fishing Nets which stand by the side of the sea.

Kochi (or Cochin, as it used to be spelled) has been the centre for traders coming to India for millenia. The Chinese first came here many years ago. I would have expected them to have landed on the Eastern coast of India but there's proably some reason involving currents or winds which explains why they came here. Anyway, these Chinese nets were apparently first erected by traders from Kublai Khan's China (Xanadu, probably) about seven hundred years ago, and have been here ever since. Now the shape of the old fishing nets is used as a symbol for the town.

There is a little beach near the town and there used to be more. The Boxing Day tsunami of a few years ago did not kill anyone here, fortunately, but nearly all of the beaches' sand was washed out to sea.

Despite the season, nearly all restaurants and shops here are open although many are doing little trade. This contrasts with Panjim and Goa generally where a lot of places were closed. Fort Kochi also has a lot of internet cafes.

Kochi is one of the largest towns in Kerala, which means Coconut Land. There are coconut trees everywhere and the people here use every part - the wood is hard and is used to make furniture, the coir of the nuts makes mats etc, the meat is eaten, the milk is widely used in Keralan cuisine (this was a bit of luck for the Jewish community, who aren't supposed to eat ordinary milk with meat) and the leaves are used as the plates.

As you walk along by the sea there are many stalls selling fresh fish just caught by fishermen, some in the ancient Chinese nets which do still work and do still catch fish. You can buy fish there and take them along to nearby restaurants to have them cooked.

The autorickshaws here are pretty well the standard Indian ones. Their only peculiarity is that the drivers here tend to personalise them by naming their autos after their favourite god or saint. So you can see St Francis Xavier and St Joseph and Ganesh and Shiva driving about. Another popular name for rickshaws here is Ferarri. Almost as soon as I can get out of my hotel in the morning I will here a call from across the street asking if I want a ride in a Ferarri.

On my first evening here I went to a Kathakali performance. This is an opera-like art form that is popular in Kerala. The stories that are dramatised are normally well known mythological tales taken from the epic poems such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. There is no speech and the characters express their feelings by subtle hand movements and fairly un-subtle facial expressions. The performances are accompanied by drum playing, the rhythm of which mirrors the emotions being expressed, and there is a sung accompaniment in old fashioned Malayalam. Malayalam is, of course, the principal language of these parts and may be the only language in the world which, when spelled in English, spelled the same backwards as forwards. A palindrome.

Proper Kathakali performances start in the evening and carry on until the morning of the next day, but the one I went to see was very much a cut down version.

I arrived at the theatre at half past five and watched the two actors putting make up on. Both actors were male. In the past Kathakali was male only but there are now some female actors - but none in the performance I witnessed.

After their make up was complete an announcer explained the basics of Kathakali (see above) and then told us that a world famous Kathakali actor would demonstrate for us the different expressions used.

You might think that "world famous Kathakali actor" was an oxymoron but, in fact, there is a world wide Kerala diaspora and I'm sure it was true. I have heard that half of all money sent to India by NRIs or people of Indian descent comes from descendants of Keralans.

He was very good, certainly. First he moved his eyes form side to side in time with the rhythmic drum playing, then his eyes moved up and down and then grew wider and smaller in time with the beat. All the time he kept his hed and the rest of his body quite still, so that only his eyes moved. He was able to make his eyes expand suddely so that it seemed they were about to jump out from his head, producing an image of a cartoon character.

After a bit of this he moved on to showing us the Nine Emotions that are included in Kathakali plays. These are Love, Amusement, Contempt, Compassion, Anger, Fear, Courage, Wonder and Tranquility.

Some of the facial expressions were very over the top, but I could generally see what was going on. I was a bit confused by the announcer's accent as to the third emotion. I thought he'd said Content and the expression did not seem very content. Having said that, the last one didn't look all that tranquil either.

The play itself, after all this, only lasted half an hour. The plot was the temptation of the Prince of Heaven by a demon who disguised herself as a beautiful goddess, But the Prince realises she cannot be from heaven because of her explicit sexuality and kills her with his sword.

The Prince of Heaven looked quite realistic, with his green face and great golden crown and his red and gold cloak but the temptress was too obviuosly masculine. Her face was painted red.

When the Prince guesses that she's a demon there's a transformation when she is supposed to change from beautiful to ugly. It was more like from ugly to uglier but it was still a good effect.

It is said that a lot of the money sent back by NRIs to Keralans goes to the underground gangs of hoodlums or goondas who control a lot of business here. Just now there's a lot of news and comment in the papers about the death, apparently by murder, of a local business man - Paul Muthoot George.

I went on a day's cruise around the "backwaters" of Kerala. These are interconnected lakes and rivers and canals which run mostly paralell to the Arabian sea along the Keralan coastline. It was very relaxing and it was interesting to see the scenes of Indian life along the waterside. I saw many women doing their washing, one washing pots and pans but mostly washing clothes. Some children were swimming, a woman was fishing, there was a boy in a coracle collecting leaves from the water.

The scenery was beautiful and it was a lot quieter than the city.

The city has its attraction too. I saw a snake charmer today who charmed two King Cobras out of cane baskets to dance upright to the tune of his pipes. Though, from what I've read, they were actually moving in time to the pipe's movement as they are deaf. I did notice that he couldn't signal to them to get back in their basket but just pushed them both in. I wonder what their lives are like, staying all day in a small basket except when made to dance for the divertion of tourists. Well, the life of the mice they eat is probably worse.

The population of Kerala is, like that of Goa, divided between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. In fact there is a larger proportion of Christians here than in Goa, which has quite surprised me - hence the number of rickshaws with St Francis, St Joseph etc blazoned on them.

I bought a nice statue of Shiva and Parvati on one of the first days of Ramadan from a shop in a moslem area and I asked the owner how he, as a moslem, could bring himself to sell idols. His answer was "Business is business."

For many years there was also a large Jewish population here but, since the creation of the state of Israel, nearly all of the Keralan Jews have migrated there. Only fourteen Jews now live in Kochi. I spoke to one of them, a Mrs Cohen who lived and kept a shop on Jew Street, Jew Town. She told me, talking of the forthcoming High Holyday festivities, that the Rabbi had had a fall and hurt his head and was very ill and that the chap who blew the shofar had said that he will be leaving soon. The community appears to be doomed.

It's very sad because it certainly was a long lived community. Opinions about when Jews first came to Kerala vary. Some say it was after the death of King Solomon when his kingdom was divided. Some say even earlier, at the time of the Babylonian captivity. Some say later, maybe as late as the 600s AD. No one doubts that Jews have lived here for well over a thousand years. maybe over two thousand.

As I indicated above the historically Jewish area of Kochi is Jewtown, which is about a mile or so from Fort Kochi. The jews here came as refugees from further south in Kerala. Their kingdom there, known as Shingly, had been destroyed by Moslems and they asked the King of Kochi for refuge. He welcomed them and gave them an area to live in and buld a synagogue next to his own palace. The synagogue in Jewtown and the King's Palace (now called the Dutch Palace because the Dutch rebuilt it) are right next to each other. The area in which the synagogue and the palace stand is known as Mattancherry. There is a theory that this name derives from the Hebrew "mattanah" which means gift. As "cherry" can mean town (as in Pondicherry etc) this would make it Gift Town.

The synagogue is small but beautiful, pretiffied by over 1,000 Chinese tiles each of which is said to be different. I looked closely at a few but could not verify this claim. You could have quite a game of mah jong using these tiles!

Later on, when having a coffee at the local Cafe Coffee Day, I met a chap from America, originally from New York called Chaim Weismann who was a practicing Jew and who dovened regularly at the Kochi shul. He told me a few anecdotes about it. He had heard from Sammy Uncle (Samuel Hallegua, the head of the community) that Jew Street, the street leading to the shul was modelled on a ytypical Brahmin street which would have a temple at one end and the most important houses nearest to the temple (or in this case, synagogue). He also told me about the time that HM the Queen came to visit about forty years ago. Apparently she took her shoes off when she saw the beautiful Chinese tiles and said that they were too lovely to be walked upon by shoes. And it was after that, that tourists have been banned from wearing shoes. Worshippers may wear shoes. During the same visit there was a dinner for the Queen and Sammy Uncle was due to give the speech of welcome (he's obviously been communiy head for quite some time). He had forgotten his glasses and couldn't find the place in his speech and he called to his wife for his glasses. His wife was called Queenie. Chaim didn't know if Her Majesty had heard this or not nor what her reaction had been if she had.

Another interesting thing he told me was that the reading of the Torah was not done from the usual place - the bimah in the middle of the shul - but from a gallery at the back of the upper storey of the shul in front of the women's gallery. Apparently from the place where the Law is read you can see right out of a window into the rajah's old palace.

He also told me something about the clock tower that I had not noticed. The side facing Jew Street has the numerals in Roman numbers, the side facing the rajah's palace has the numbers in Malayalam (including an archaic form of the number ten), the side facing the shul has the numbers in hebrew lettering and the remaining side is blank. It was a pity that I met him on my last day here, he was very interesting to talk to and knew a lot about the Jewish history here and also (being an English Literature major) about English literature. We recited the start of the Canterbury Tales together in Middle English and then he did some of Beowulf to me (he had studied Anglo-Saxon) and I did Gawaine and the Grene Knyghte back at him.

We were also talking about the situation in Swat in Pakistan and I recited the well known rhyme:

Who, or why, or which, or what,
Is the Akond of SWAT?
Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or a sofa or a chair,
or SQUAT,
The Akond of Swat?

He told me that he actually knew the great-grandchildren of the Akond of Swat and showed me their wedding photos. His eyes filled with tears as he thought about the misfortune that had befallen the people of that beautiful valley.

The Keralans call their state "God's Own Country". I had thought the Kiwis had copyrighted that one. Also the Keralans do not specify to which the country appertains. Ganesh maybe or Hanuman, who lived nearby. For some reasons the Keralans are very found of ancient king here who is said not to have been human, but not a god either - Bali, the good. When he ruled Kerala everything was perfect. There was no caste system and everyone dealt fairly with one another. He was so good a king that he almost managed to rule heaven too, but Vishnu came in the shape of a small man and asked a boon for as much land as he could walk in three steps. Of course Good King Bali readily agreed - how much land could that be after all? But in his first teo steps Vishnu covered the whole world and the heavens and what lies beneath. The self sacrificing Bali offered himself to prevent Vishnu taking the third step that might have dissolved reality. As a reward he is allowed to visit his Kingdom of Kerala once a year on the festival of Onam - which starts on 2nd September this year. Maybe Kerala is Bali's Own Country.


The Old Harbour Hotel was a really beautiful place to stay: perfectly located, lovely rooms and ambience and very helpful staff.

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Photos

Fort Kochi
Cannon from old fort

St Francis Church
Burial place of Vasco da Gama

Inside the cathedral
Note ceiling paintings

Kathakali
The hands above represent the various emotions

My hotel
Ornaments in room

Comments

[tessa mills]

God's own country indeed
I have loved your blog entries, from your initial wonders of Kao San road and wet T shirt competitions to 'teaching' in Krabi and Udaipur, (I think you should take up a new career as a singing teacher upon your return) to the delights, wonders and frustrations that is India. Kerala though is another pace altogether and Its my favourite state in India. Do head up into one of the hill stations such as Ooty. They are another reminder of the British Colonial empire and how the British were in India and yet somehow not really part of it. Did you see the paintings in the ladies bedroom at the Dutch Palace in Kochi ???????!!!!!!!!!!