Cochin, or
Kochi; in God’s Own Country, and nothing less than the biggest city – what is
to be expected?
Broadway
Market is suggested as the first stop. A creaking ferry from a God-forsaken
jetty, a brief waterside walk, and we reach our destination.
It is a
low-key market, congested, crowded, getting ready for Christmas. But it’s a
‘poor state’ and you can give this much of leeway. You are back in the cottage
and it’s the end of the day. The first tryst with Cochin is nothing to
remember.
The morning sun
changes all that. You wake up and you discover what bliss is. Now you don’t
regret having spent so much on sea-side cottages; now you don’t berate yourself
for having included Cochin in you six-day Kerela itinerary; now, you fall
crazily in love with the view outside your window; now, you just want to sit
and gaze tenderly at these backwaters that stretch before your eyes, and want
to follow the lonesome ship till it disappears behind a distant island. Cochin
makes you hear its silence.
As you get
ready to leave your cottage, a half-buried memory resurfaces: a wooden cottage,
out on the sea, white curtains, white sunshine… it’s not creaking under Blue
Lagoon inspired adolescent fantasies of non-stop sex this time… and it makes
you think of a different life.
You spend the
rest of the day roaming about, ticking off a few boxes on you ‘To Visit’ list.
You discover a number of things. Firstly, Cochin is not nearly as small as
Broadway had suggested. Secondly, Fort Kochi is not really a fort at all.
Thirdly, Jew Town is a beautiful place, especially if you happen to go into
that shop near the Friday-closed synagogue where they’ll show you a wonderful
chessboard with bronze pieces on one side and brass on the other, which, if you
looked at it long enough, could have burnt a Rs. 7,500 hole in your pocket,
which you might or might not have later regretted.
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