Kochi... Cochin? Kochin?

Our stay in Cochin (or however you spell it) was to be brief, lasting only a full day. But the first thirty minutes were enough for me to realize that I really liked the part in which we were staying. The Portuguese, though most prevalent in Goa, were allowed to build, in Magellan's time, a fort - what is now known as the heritage town of Fort Cochin. It, alongside it's sister citysprawl across the bay, known as Ernakulam, makes up the town of Cochin... or Kochi... or...

A significant portion of the day was spent (okay more like 20 minutes) asking how what the town's name actually was. Seems like the residents have different opinions. Some call it Kochi, others Cochin, and the occasional, "No, no, it's spelled K-O-C-H-I-N." Bah. It seems that whereas Mumbai has caught on as an alternative to Bombay, and Kolkata has become the accepted nomenclature of Calcutta, the change of the British Raj name of Cochin to (the more Indian?) Kochi seems to not have caught on. In fact, outside of Kerala, (as when I was booking our plane tickets) some people (including travel agents) seem to think they are actually two different cities...

Well, whether we were in Kochi or Cochin, the heritage town was really great. Much like Pondicherry, there were, mercifully, plenty of street signs which made navigating fairly easy. Our morning walk led us up toward the Chinese fishing nets, these giant contraptions that lower a large net into the water and catch fish (though this proves ineffectual at low tide). I would think that fishing all day every day for the past 20 years would have fished that place clean, but seems that the fish in the waters off the city aren't that bright... Though the fisherman are geniuses. Knowing that tourists come to check out their nets, one member of the five-man teams recruits a tourist (like myself) and encourages him to take a picture taking part in the fishing activity. The recruiter hands the rope to the tourist and sits down to watch. The four men + tourist team then hoists (using considerable effort) the net out of the water and reels in the catch. The fish are sorted, the tourist gets his picture, and leaves a small tip... Wait... What? Talk about brilliant business. Yes, in one of the my less brighter moves, I paid a fisherman to let me do his job for him...

As we continued along, the street signs began to disappear and we were lost. A friendly rickshaw driver (they're all friendly, aren't they?) offers us a sightseeing excursion for only Rs. 50/- an hour. And so we take it, despite the fact that we do have a driver at our hotel who knows the city just as well... Anyway, we stop at the St. Francis Cathedral first. I still find the religious mixing of Hindu and Christian norms fascinating. The large pile of shoes at the entrance, bowing at the threshold of the church door... A lady asks us to take a picture of her daughter, a cute little girl in a pretty dress. I oblige and show her the result on my Nikon's tiny little 1.25" display. She's very happy and gives me a quick Indian head-wiggle and a giant smile.

And as I walked away I realized, this small interaction wasn't the same as all the obnoxious Indian men that want their photo taken. They want three or four, and I delete all of them later, most of the time. The look in this woman's eyes and her exuberant happiness conveyed a very different message. She could have cared less that she was in the picture. She was just gleeful with the simple knowledge that somewhere in the world, a record existed of how beautiful her daughter looked on the day she was baptized. She would never see me again. She would never see that picture again. She would have no record but her memory. And for some reason, that made that picture very important to me.

Our rickshaw-wallah is curious about Mary and me - "Coming from India?" he asks to me, giving me an inquisitive head waggle that is so prominent in the south. "I am Indian, a Gujarati," I respond. "Oh! Very good. Visiting Jain Temples?" Puzzled as to the relationship of me being Gujarati to Fort Cochin's Jain Temples I say, "Sure, we will visit the Jain Temples." It becomes clear when my entry into the Temple complex is a departure from Kerala and a re-entry into Gujarat. In fact, for the next 30 minutes, I hear no Malayalam at all, only Gujarati.

Let me take this moment to point out how great being a Gujarati can be. Speaking to one of the temple administrators sitting in the main office, my simple, "Kem chho?" is rewarded with huge smiles, offers for tea, and as the conversation continues, with contact numbers for other Gujarati families in Kerala in case anything goes wrong and we need help and a list of the Gujarati shop keepers in Fort Cochin, where I can shop at the non-tourist rate. I'm blown away sometimes by how tightly knit the Gujarati communities can be.

As we re-emerged into Kerala, we headed into the narrower streets of the "Jew Town" of Fort Cochin. Though it was called "Jew Town" (a horrible name, it seems), there wasn't too much Jewish about it anymore. In fact, the synagogue there was the only thing that had anything remotely Jewish about it. The most interesting part, though, wasn't the town itself. The irony in the fact that we walked south of the Jewish town right into the Muslim district was not lost on me. Seems that even in the Land of the Hindus, a quarter of the way around the world, Judaism and Islam can still find a way to butt right up against each other. Figures.

Next came Mary's lesson in bargaining. As we entered a shop that looked interesting, Mary got interested in some shawls. We saw the full price range, from cheap synthetic scarves, to mid-range pashmina scarves, to extraordinarily soft (and expensive "fahtoosh" (?) (I thought that was a Lebanese salad...) scarves. Mary settled on a couple of pashmina ones that she liked. "Rs. 1800 for both" the shop-keeper says. She turns to me and asks how much she should pay for them. "You have to do the bargaining, Mary, they're your shawls!" And so the lesson begins. And the shopkeeper, seeing that I'm giving a lesson on bargaining joins in on helping out, obligingly lowering his "final price" as we raise our starting price.

And at the end of a textbook bargaining session, Mary walks away with two Pashmina shawls for Rs. 1000/-. "Good job, Mary! Saved Rs. 800/-! Wanna buy me dinner?" She punches me.

And after buying me dinner, she and I headed over to a small bamboo hut where we had tickets for an evening Kathakali performance. Our trip to the Kalamandalam in Cheruthuruthy was incomplete - Mary had seen the students, but never the final product. So were we in for a shortened-for-tourists-version of Kathakali that included the elaborate makeup session. The story on show was from the Mahabharata - that of Kichaka, the general of the King Virata's army who makes improper advances on Draupadi (in disguise as a handmaiden because of the Pandava's exile requirements). Draupadi runs to her mighty husband Bhima crying. Bhima vows to kill Kichaka. Bhima kills Kichaka. And that's basically the story. It just takes a good hour and a half to perform in Kathakali. It's little wonder that they make a "made-for-tourists" version. Can you imagine how long the whole Mahabharata would take? Yeesh.

After the show, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel to catch some shuteye before heading to the tea-plantation land of Munnar, in the Western Ghats of Kerala.