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Published: January 6th 2019
Fort Cochin in Kerala is an anomaly, a relief with its relative tranquility and yawning pace. Shady streets, Ayurvedic treatment centers everywhere, homestays, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants abound.
Huge Chinese fishing nets are anchored along the shore. At least four men work the heavy stone ballast and raise the net, sometimes wiggling with a big fish. When the men aren’t moving the net, they call to passers-by, hoping to lure them near the contraption to try their hand at raising the load. For a small fee, of course.
Caw-caws talk to everyone, they don’t discriminate, and puppies and mama dogs knock on my legs, looking for a friendly handout. A caw-caw is a crow, of course.
At 6:30 am, dozens of people are trying out their walking shoes, playing badminton, stretching, lifting weights in a makeshift gym that lasts a couple hours in a parking lot. A few people call out “good morning!” But most are intent on their exercise, women in saris and burkas, some in shorts, men in groups, chatting about who knows what...the price of a new car or motorbike, perhaps?
Clusters of pigeons gather around people who’ve developed a special relationship with them. Kitties
skulk around the fish stalls, hoping to find a castoff entrail or two. A pack of men near the fish vendors sound as if they’re chanting. They’re bidding for the catch of the morning. Some of the fish are quite handsome and big, though I imagine the catch has dwindled over the years.
Really big trees with spreading branches that teem with mosses and ferns and other feathery life line the streets. Open spaces host young men playing cricket. Women wearing caps and mitts throw balls back and forth. I wonder if they’re part of a baseball team. I saw no one batting a ball, just throwing it. Sometimes herds of them dash back and forth as a coach urges them to run faster.
Bicycles pass by, the occasional vehicle, tourists walk the streets, looking for St. Francis Church where Vasco de Gama was entombed. The old Dutch Cemetery holds stories of the days when this port was important for trade in spices—pepper—more precious than gold—ginger, cardamom, turmeric, and all the rest of those magical seeds, roots, and leaves.
A couple miles away is a place called “Jew Town”— really—the location of the oldest synagogue in India—adorned
on the interior with chandeliers imported from Belgium over a 100 years ago. Antique shops line the street, their owners urging people to “just have a look. Very cool inside.”
A spice warehouse, its central drying area barren of ginger, is still used, barely. By tourists, I think, to watch the three women in a covered area shaking ginger pieces through a screen, throwing choking dust everywhere. Ancient termite-pocked wooden stairs climb to a spice store, where I decline to purchase anything because I’m not sure of the freshness. The woman is like a used car salesman, relentless in her pitch to sell face mask powder, herbal tea, scented soap, ginger candy, and water purifying root bundles.
The old Palace, built by the Portuguese and remodeled later by the Dutch is closed, so I wander around the building, discovering a set of stone stairs with carvings in the risers.
I told my driver, firmly, “No shops.” He promised we would not visit one. I remembered the drill from a previous visit: the auto rickshaw driver gets a liter of petrol or some cooking oil if his passenger spends at least five minutes in the shop. I don’t
like spending time doing that. But sure enough, he begs me, “Just five minutes. Just five. You don’t buy.” I give in, glance at my watch, engage in serious discussion about the weather with the Kashmiri sales person, then admire a $2,000 sculpture of Krishna before I promise to think more about purchasing it. I tossed his business card in the trash later. My driver got a liter of coconut oil to keep his wife happy in the kitchen.
That sculpture was truly divine.
I didn’t mention the flirting. I’m too old for that. Or maybe not. I wandered into a restaurant that serves tasty Gujarati food and met a man about my age visiting for Ayurvedic dental treatments. He visits that restaurant everyday because he is Gujarati, although he lives in London now. So he joined me for lunch. I didn’t flirt with him, just talked. Actually, I listened to him talk. The flirting started when the restaurant owner sat at the table nearby and chatted with us. I didn’t even know he was flirting. But the next day I returned, the owner greeted me, perhaps a bit too warmly, and the same man from London was
there.
“No flirting allowed,” the owner warned the man from London, his competition. I know the restaurant owner has a wife. She was cooking in the restaurant kitchen.
They both had a good yuk over the flirting comment.
“What a fun place,” I told the owner.
And another fun exchange at the money-changing office:
“Sixty-eight rupees to the dollar. That’s the best rate,” the smiling young man said.
“What if I change a $100 more?”
“Then this.” His calculator read 68.15.
“What’s your education?” I asked. I really had no point in asking him that.
“BS in Economics,” he said.
“So that degree is needed to tell me the exchange rate?” He smiles, leaves and comes back with the calculator showing some numbers.
“Here’s the total amount you get in rupees.”
“Oh, you figured more than I did,” I said. I was trying to be proactive, working it out on my iphone calculator, but used the wrong exchange rate.
“That’s because I have a degree in economics.”
Clever young man.
I really like strolling around Fort Cochin, where people laugh at my lame comments, and
one or two might even flirt with me. And I’m too dim to notice.
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Andrea
How lucky are you to spend so much time in India! What a wonderful way to really get to know a country. I'm envious.