Cochin, India

We spent Wednesday, April 4, in Cochin, India.

Before writing about our visit to Cochin, I want to amplify on something I reported in my last blog post.  There I related that the first of our two guides in Chennai, our first stop in India, told us how all of the various ethnic/religious groups represented in India (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Muslim, etc.) live in harmony and mutual respect for each other's cultures and religions.  The next day, while we were at sea, one of our guest lecturers from Viking's distinguished lecturers program, a retired Canadian diplomat named Terrrance Greenberg one of whose areas of expertise is India, told us that the current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, comes from and heads a political party that is fascist in nature, believes that Hitler had the right idea and has a history of persecuting Muslims.  (Although Modi visited the United States in June 2016 and again in June 2017, in 2005, before he became PM, his U.S. visa was revoked and he was denied permission to enter the country because of his alleged involvement in the fomenting of inter-ethnic riots in India in 2002.   See, e.g., https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/sca/rls/rm/2005/43701.htm.)  Sorting out the question whether and to what extent there is or isn't religious harmony in India is obviously beyond the scope of this travel blog, but I thought I should relate what Mr. Greenberg had to say. 

Now, about Cochin.  Referred to by locals as Kochi, Cochin was formed in 1102 when the Kingdom of Kulasekhara broke up.  Today it is a major port city along the Arabian Sea in India's southwest state of Kerala.  It has been a center of spice trade going back 1,000 years and continues to export cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, pepper and countless other spices.  It is still regarded as the world's leading producer of pepper.  Dutch, British, Portuguese and Chinese influences have left their mark on the city's architecture, culture and cuisine.  Greater Cochin has a current population of around two million people, of whom 55% are Hindus, 20% are Christians and 24% are Muslims.  The state of Kerala has a democratically elected communist government, the only one of its kind in India.

There are at least two Cochins.  One of them is a city of modern hi-rise buildings visible from our stateroom veranda.  This was the closest we got to it.

    

The other is the much older city we visited today.  The port itself lacks any cruise terminal infrastructure other than basic dock tie-up facilities.  Even the port welcome sign is bare bones.

There were two cruise ships docked side by side.  Ours, which currently has about 840 passengers plus a crew of 459 onboard (down from our original number because several passengers have had to leave the cruise for a variety of medical reasons).  The other was the Emerald Princess which has 2,670 passengers and 1,000 crew onboard.  In addition to more than the usual complement of waiting tour buses, there was a long row of tent-covered retail stalls set up, as well as a portable money exchange trailer.

Even the immigration screening facility was temporary.  It was divided into two sections, one for our ship and the other for the Emerald Princess.  Note the bottleneck on the EP side and none on our side.  One of the advantages of a smaller ship.

  

Janis and I had signed up for an excursion titled "Cochin & Mattancherry Palace."  We boarded the tour bus and headed out to our first stop.  On the way we saw scenes like those below.  (As you undoubtedly know, movie making is a huge industry in India -- bigger than our Hollywood -- and Indians love to go to the cinema, like the one pictured in the 10th frame here.)

                  

We also passed this beautiful Catholic church with an adjacent affiliated cemetery.

  

Our first stop was St. Francis Church, the first European church to be build in India (circa 1500).  The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was buried there in 1524, although his remains were removed to Portugal in 1538.

  

We were at this point in a waterfront area known as Fort Kochi and walked from the church past the ever-present gauntlet of vendors and the Cochin Club (an elegant hotel with old world charm) to the waterfront itself.

    

I couldn't resist photographing a variety of colorful things featuring different shapes and textures that we passed along the way.

 

                            
                                                             
When we reached Fort Kochi Beach, we saw some of the famous cantilevered Chinese fishing nets.  The fishermen who operate them lower the nets into the water and leave them there for no more than 5 minutes before hauling them back up using the weighted cantilevered system that is central to these devices.  All they were catching while we watched were very small fish.

                                                                                                                 

The beach itself wasn't very clean.

                                   
We also passed two water buffalo cooling themselves off in a large puddle of water.

  

As we continued walking, we passed the Old Harbour Hotel, a spa that was once the home of a prominent Jew (red building), a beautiful playground, and the proverbial pile of trash just outside the playground.

    

We also walked by the Cochin Aquatic Club, a cultural center, and a very nice hotel.

                                        

At this point, we re-boarded our tour bus and were driven to Mattancherry, home of Cochin's namesake palace and the old Jewish Quarter.  On the way we passed scenes like these:

      

The palace, known as the Mattancherry Palace or Dutch Palace and now a museum, was actually built by the Portuguese around 1555 and presented to the then king of Cochin to curry his favor.  Around 1665, the Dutch, who by then had displaced the Portuguese in this part of what is now India, extensively renovated the palace.  The taking of photographs is allowed in certain rooms but not in others.  It is not a grand palace by any means.  Its rooms are long but very narrow and overall it is not that large.  It does have beautiful wooden ceilings and several of its walls contain hand-painted murals whose colors come from various vegetable dyes that were used at the time.  It is amazing that hundreds of years later and despite the intense heat and humidity (the palace lacks any climate control) these murals appear to be in quite good condition.  Palace or not, all I could think of as we moved through it with lots of other visitors on an extremely hot, humid day was how oppressive it had to be to live there without air conditioning.  Of course, that continues to be the reality for most people who do live in India.

                                

Within a very few yards of the palace is a 4-building complex known as the Paradesi Synagogue, India's oldest active synagogue.  ("Paradesi" means "foreigners.")  The reason the synagogue, built in 1568, occupies such a choice piece of real estate so close to the palace is because the then king of Cochin, Rama Varma, gave that land to the Yehuden Mappila, or Malabari Jews, a group of prosperous Sephardic Jewish traders who had settled in the region and were very involved in the lucrative spice trade that brought substantial wealth to the area.  Here is a photo of the rear of one of the synagogue buildings that I took from just outside the palace to show how close to the palace it is.

The synagogue is closed on Jewish holidays.  Because it is still Passover, we were not able to go inside but I did take photos of the outside.

                                                                                            

Because photos I've seen of the interior of the synagogue indicate that it is quite beautiful, I decided to downloaded some from the internet and have included them here.  The floor tiles are hand painted and are from China.

                      

According to our guide, there are only 3 Jewish families, consisting of a total of 6 people, remaining in this Mattancherry neighborhood of Cochin.  There once were 20,000 Jews there, most of whom emigrated to Israel in the 1950s.  He explained that for Shabbat and all other holiday services enough other Jews from surrounding towns come to this historic synagogue to insure the critical minyan (10 or more Jews).  Whether women are counted for this purpose, I don't know.

Our guide pointed out the home, just a few doors away from the synagogue, of its oldest surviving member, Sarah, who is 94 1/2.  Note the mezuzah on her doorpost.

                       

Janis and I were the last of our tour group to walk away from Sarah's house.  We were followed for a few feet by these boys who wanted us to know that they know Sarah.  They told us that her last name is -- are you ready for this? -- Cohen.  A pretty emotional moment and a real feeling of connection.

The area surrounding the synagogue is known as Jew Town and the major street there is Jew Street.  One of the buildings in that neighborhood must be Jain related (see April 2 blog on Chennai, India) because, once again, we couldn't help but notice the swatstika symbol on it.  Ironic.

Otherwise, there were numerous symbols of the neighborhood's Jewish history.

            

At this point we re-boarded our bus for the ride back to the ship.  Here's the scene when we got there.

We had a back-on-board time of 5:30.  On every other one of our many port calls so far on this cruise the ship has sailed away within minutes of the all-aboard deadline.  But not this time.  When we went to dinner at 7 p.m. we noticed that the ship was still tied up, and during dinner we could see lots of commotion at the gangway, including flashing police lights and people shouting at each other.  The general manager of this ship is himself Indian.  He was very much involved in whatever was going on.  We finally sailed away just minutes before 9 p.m.  The explanation we were initially given for the delay:  Indian bureaucracy that held up our clearance to leave.  We later learned what happened in more detail.  The Indian authorities noticed that an Indian national who was a crewmember on board had not returned to the ship and that, therefore, everyone who had cleared immigration was not back onboard.  The ship's management did not know where the crewmember was and simply said he was missing, using that word in a non-technical sense.  The Indians, however, latched onto the word "missing" and insisted that a missing person report now had to be filed and that, in turn, caused the matter to be referred to higher-ups in the national law enforcement community in Delhi.  The missing crewmember was located, was determined to be safe and apparently realized he was homesick and decided not to return to the ship but failed to let anyone know.

Today (Thursday, April 5) we are at sea on our way up the coast of India to Goa with a scheduled arrival time tomorrow of 7 a.m.  I'll next blog about our visit there.