This is India

India is a Good Place, Well, If Chaos Is Good That Is – Trivandrum January 1999

We arrive at Trivandrum airport on the flight from Bahrain, following on from Discarded Boxes in the Airport Lounge. There is a can-only-happen-in-India moment with passports at the airport. Is it only a package-tourist who would take a passport without checking whether it is his?

Onto the tarmac at Trivandrum airport and yes, we are in India. An old truck with steps pulls up alongside the aeroplane and the driver gets out and leads us all from the foot of the steps to the terminal building, underneath the aeroplane, right behind the jets. The Brits don’t follow him; they go round the aeroplane, while the cabin crew stand at the top of the steps looking horrified that someone might not.

Passport (lack-of) Control

Into the passport control area where the system is that a man ticks every item on your embarkation form and corrects any errors, then hands your passport to another man who stamps it, then passes it to another man who carries it to a different desk. What happens at this desk is not clear but the carrying man then brings a handful of passports back and says: ‘Whose are these?’

My passport didn’t appear. Most other people were getting theirs after a while, but not me.

The carrying man, meanwhile, was getting quite agitated because a passport was not being claimed. He kept taking it back to the desk and bringing it out again, waving it about and calling: ‘Nicola Jones!’.

It began to seem likely that Nicola Jones had taken my passport in error, so Hilary, who by now had her passport, went down into the baggage hall, to see if she could find Nicola Jones.

I, meanwhile, eventually got the man to allow me to look at the unclaimed passport, where I could see that it belonged to someone whose name was actually Nicholas James Jarvis.

I couldn’t get down to the baggage hall as I couldn’t leave passport control without a passport, however I could look over the balcony, just about, so I shouted down for Nicholas James Jarvis and a man with a walking stick looked up. Hilary honed in on him and got him to check his passport, to find it was mine. He had already used it to change some currency, still without noticing.

Hilary persuaded the man to limp up the stairs back to passport control, where he and I exchanged passports over the shoulder of the controller man, and then I could get out.

This is India. Or is it that we are perhaps just still in package-tour land?

The story continues with The Streets of Trivandrum.

The Streets of Trivandrum

From the Airport to the Hotel – Trivandrum, January 1999

This follows on from This is India, where we had some Indian chaos at Trivandrum airport, but eventually got through and made our way to our hotel, and had some socio-political ponderings on the way.

We changed money at the airport with uncommonly little fuss, then off to see the package tour rep who told us to go to bus number 4. This was a bit of a walk and not at all visible from the terminal buildings, but we found it and then once all the required people had been collected up, and sufficient hangers-on had climbed into the front part of the bus, off we went through the bumpy, noisy, dirty, busy, narrow Indian streets, past the little stalls selling a few bottles of water and bananas; the stalls selling betel nuts; the stalls selling glasses of tea; and the stalls where it was not entirely clear what they were selling. Past the dogs and cows and people living on the street. Bumpity-bump out of town.

In the hot, sunny weather with the windows open, remembering constantly that if the driver braked hard, there was a sharp metal window-catch right by my head.

No Full Stops in India

Out of town we see an elephant – a working elephant – and we pass people picking coir (the coarse fibre obtained from the tissues surrounding the seed of the coconut palm), a bit like the Victorian picking oakum in essence, and spinning it, and we pass many, many stonebreakers. Again this had a Victorian feel, or possible pre-Victorian, men and women, sitting by a pile of granite-like blocks and hitting them with a hammer made of a piece of stone tied to a stick to break them into pieces small enough to be used as road stone. Bash, bash, bash all day long under a coconut-matting sunshade.

I am reading Mark Tully’s No Full Stops in India in which he argues that the western idea of technology and consumerism is not appropriate for India where they have such an abundance of labour. It’s all very well for him to say that, he doesn’t have to spend his days breaking stones for a living. To be fair to Mark Tully he does recognise that he is able to live a privileged life among people who are in poverty, but his arguments sound so much like those that might have been made by the wealthy of the time about the working class in nineteenth-century England that I am very suspicious of his theories.

We learn later that stone-breakers earn ‘good money’, one hundred rupees per day (£1.50 at 1999 rates) and that they are employed by the road contractors at this purported high rate because the work is dangerous and flying stone chips often injure their arms and legs. The stone-breakers only make the coarse stone, the finer stuff for the road surface is done by machine.

Pondering on whether it is better to have a dangerous or demeaning job which has no future or no job at all, and thinking about how the British version of the caste system, the class system, was so similar to that described by Mark Tully as forming a social cohesion and belonging among people of a common caste or class, and how that needed breaking down in Britain as it I’m sure it does, despite Mr Tully’s views, in India and for the same reasons, we arrive at our destination. Almost. Where we are staying does not have a road to it, so porters arrive and take our baggage and we are led down a narrow rough track to our guest house; the moustachioed owner shakes our hand.

Our Accommodation and Surroundings

We have ordered a ‘high’ room, or rather it has been ordered for us, so we are up with the tops of the coconut trees, which turns out to be good fortune as it is very hot down below at the lower levels.

First thing: some sleep. We eschew the ‘welcome reception’ at midday local time, though it seems that the rest of our group went to it.

Waking about 4pm we walked to the beach to find people sunbathing and swimming in the sea. We walk along the beach, over the sewage outlet, and along another beach. Time for a drink in one of the numerous cafés that line the beachfront, most of themn propped-up on ill-disguised sandbags.

Our beer and Coke came to 169 rupees, and this included a wonderful onion pakora and tomato salad. £2.30 the lot. 70 rupees to the pound at the moment. We’ll come to see this as inflated tourist prices in India, but not yet.

Back to the quiet guesthouse for a cold shower – no hot water in this cheapo guesthouse – then out for some dinner.

All the beachside restaurants have fresh fish on display and it seems we choose perhaps the best in terms of price and quality. Barracudi and Butterfish on a sizzling platter. And the chips are so good, presumably because of real potatoes.

Will we eat fish and chips for a fortnight? No, because we are off travelling; we had only intended to stay in the guesthouse for the first night and we are running at least one day late on account of the delay in Bahrain.

The story continues with A Beach Tourist Experience.

A Beach Tourist Experience

A Day at the Tourist Resort – Kerala, January 1999

This follows-on from The Streets of Trivandrum. We arrived at the beach resort guesthouse and had intended to spend just one night there before going off travelling. But the journey had been unexpectedly tiring so we decided to have a lazy day before setting off.

Breakfast with Doreen

We came down to breakfast and met Doreen. In her dressing gown and glasses she was an expert on India. She had been many times and knew all about it.

Another couple from our flight came and joined us. It seems they had been taken under Doreen’s wing the evening before and had been shown the only good place to eat. Doreen was a bit put out to find that that was where we had eaten too.

No one was allowed to tell a story except Doreen. She was somewhat peeved to hear, too, upon announcing grandly and authoritatively that 1997 had been the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, that we had been at the anniversary celebrations in Delhi. I tried to relate a tale about it.

‘Oh, I must get a fruit juice’, interjected Doreen, ‘Excuse me, can I have a fruit juice?’ I got through my story in three instalments, despite all attempts by Doreen to derail the flow, to the embarrassment of the other couple, should they show any interest or was it politic not to? I didn’t care, I was determined not to let her get away with her rudeness.

We noticed that evening that Doreen and her husband were at their favourite table (for she had told us they always got their favourite table) in their favourite restaurant. Alone.

A Lazy Day

Today was a lazy day, we spent almost the entire day sitting in the ‘German Bakery’; this was a beach café, rather basic, which seemed to have relatively low prices and sell Austrian cakes.

We lunched on fried fish pieces, OK but not special, and a few glasses of ‘ginger ale’; this seemed to be ground fresh ginger topped up with water – possible not too sterile water – and it tasted like granny’s ginger beer, excellent!

The story continues with The Fishing Village.

The Fishing Village

A Walk to the Nearby Village – Kerala, January 1999

This follows-on from The Beach Tourist Experience where on account of finding ourselves tired we spent a lazy day in the beach cafés, then in the evening we went for a walk to the nearby fishing village.

At about 4pm, when the heat was beginning to subside a bit, we decided to walk over the headland to the next bay, where the guidebook told us there was a fishing village.

Suddenly, no tourists! (ie none apart from us)

It Really Was a Fishing Village

There really was a fishing village in the next bay; it was like stepping into Whitby in the 1890s, with men mending their nets on the beach, barely a space to move for boats (though one difference from 1890 was that some of the boats had Suzuki outboard motors), stepping over the results of people’s toilet on the beach; boats preparing to put to sea.

The boats of 4–5 men go out at dusk, then sit fishing with a hurricane lamp until dawn, so that from the beach you can see twinkling lights out at sea in various shades of intensity. Some of the boats have outboard motors but some are rowed, using oars made from motley-shaped bits of wood and metal lashed together.

The Fishing Village Township and Village Meeting

Many of the houses were immensely poor; people staring at us and the women giggling.

After a climb through the narrow rough-earth lanes, we came to the main square, where to our amazement there was an enormous Catholic church, freshly painted yellow and pink with a model ship and mermaid dominating the spire. (At some point I’ll find out where this church actually was).

The church, though, was not our first point of attention – that was the commotion coming from the village hall. We looked inside and found people coming and going, groups of people standing around and what appeared to be a heated argument taking place on the stage; an argument between a fluctuating number of people, anything up to about 30.

Groups of women pointed to us and giggled and a man tried to explain to us what was going on. From what we could gather, it was a type of village court, where people came to air their grievances. The man made some reference to ‘poor people’ so whether he was asking for money for the village or explaining that this was how the poor people solve their differences we weren’t sure. He wasn’t asking for money for himself as he didn’t hold his hand out.

We wandered a bit further through the village but it began to seem more and more inappropriate. We passed what appeared to be a Bible-reading with hymns, a group of women seated on the ground in front of a Madonna shrine. They could read their scriptures but only get a hymn in in-between breaks in the loud Indian pop-music coming from a giant loudspeaker that the man opposite had erected in his garden in order to blast his presence down the street. Nobody appeared to mind this, unless it was that that the people in the village hall were getting so agitated about.

The Church, the Road Back

By the time we got back to the square the village court had finished and the hall was empty. Some men were erecting a PA and blasting even more grating Indian pop music across the town.

We looked into the church but did not go in as some women were sitting on the floor, lighting candles, and praying. The cavernous space had no seats. A little boy wanted us to put money in the donations box, which we didn’t, not being entirely sure he did not have some way of extracting what we might have put in. Little boys in India are a menace, constantly asking for money. As we stood in the square outside looking at the church he started throwing stones at us from a distance. Little we could do about that. Time to go.

We couldn’t find the path that we took to get to the village so we followed the road, a detour of about a mile, with riskshaw drivers pulling alongside us and saying: ‘Hello, you want rickshaw?’, and painted trucks passing us within a foot or two.

They paint the trucks with very religious imagery round here, with a name on the front in a kind of trompe l'oeil bamboo effect. Many of them have crucifix or last-supper scenes on the rear of the cab, this being a predominantly Christian area, to our surprise.

Final Dinner Before Setting Off On Our Trip

Back to the beach resort. We’d decided to try a different restaurant tonight, one we’d stumbled upon earlier with a friendly owner. At the adjoining table were our travelling companions from the toilet-watching in Bahrain, who had come there because they had been recommended the pomfret.

I ordered pomfret and it was OK, a flat fish, reasonably tasty. Mine arrived on a sizzling platter but our new-found friends did not, it came plain and unsizzling. The man of the couple wanted to know what I had ordered to cause it to arrive so spectacularly (though he didn’t put it as precisely as that). I hadn’t done anything, I simply asked for pomfret. We paid more that our neighbours – all very mysterious.

Back along the dark beach, where earlier a man had offered to sell us ‘drugs’; now there were just a few hippy types talking in the moonlight, and the strange Indians who seem to roll themselves up in their blanket for a sleep for an hour or so and then get up and disappear.

The story continues with Train to Cochin.

Train to Cochin

Off Travelling – Kerala, January 1999

This follows-on from The Fishing Village which rounded-off our unintentionally extended stay at the beach resort. Today we are taking the train to Cochin as the start of our travels with the rucksack on the back.

Down at the Station

The next morning, pack the rucksacks and off we go. Doreen agog at breakfast.

Along the beach and up to the taxi rank where a taxi takes us to Trivandrum station for 175 rupees; the official price says 150 but he wasn’t going to do it for that (and for 30p in our money we weren’t bothered to argue).

At the station, we need to find the train for Cochin.

We go to the information desk, who directs us to the ticket window. After fighting our hands in front of pushy old ladies and into the hole in the glass we ask for a ticket to Cochin, air-conditioned 2nd class. The man directs us back to the information desk. There, they write on a scrap of paper: 2 tickets to Cochin, air-conditioned 2nd class, and we take this back to the ticket window where he sells us a ticket for two for 1,000 rupees, rather triumphantly as this we later learn is about six times the non air-conditioned price.

All this while a little chap has been trying to help us, a kind of car-door-opening tip-gatherer. He points us to the train and we give him five rupees; probably not that generous which at least got rid of him.

By good fortune we seem to have arrived at the station just 40 minutes before the ‘superfast’ train leaves. The train will take 4½ hours to Cochin and we could, if we chose, stay on it to Delhi arriving 52 hours later.

It takes us some time to find the air-conditioned coaches as there are only two of about fifty, and at first they seem to be less good than the non air-conditioned, having closed-in windows that have not been washed for some time; whereas the standard class has no windows, or rather no glass in the windows, so you can see out. The train, however, travels so slowly that the non air-conditioned would be very hot. The carriages seem to be fairly full, with bare brown arms and forlorn-looking serious faces at the bars of the windows, anticipating a long day ahead.

On the Train, Air-Conditioned 2nd Class

The compartment we choose is shared by an Indian couple with nothing to say to each other, who immediately upon entering the compartment turn the air-conditioning on full, so it starts to feel a bit chilly. They seem to be transporting a number of carrier bags stuffed with newspapers, together with a box of bananas.

Part-way through the journey first the woman, and then later the man, opens a newspaper-wrapped parcel in which there is a banana-leaf with their lunch wrapped up in it. They spend the next few seconds rolling up a ball of the contents with their fingers until it is quite a large snowball, then popping it quickly into their mouth.

We ate a red banana, bought at a stall the day before.

The guidebook had said that the ride was a pretty one, but we didn’t think it was too special, and eventually the train arrived at Ernakulam Junction, one of the Cochin stations, at about 4pm.

To Bolgatty Island

Having pushed our way out of the station we are amazed to find: no hassle. Nobody saying: ‘You want a rickshaw?’ or ‘You want a taxi?’. Nothing. In fact we couldn’t find a rickshaw at all.

We checked the price to the quay with some taxi drivers and they said 100 rupees. but this seemed too much. Then they offered to take us for 80 but this still seemed too much. We wandered off along the street where a taxi stopped and said the price would be 200 rupees, then another one said he’d do it for 50, so we went with him.

At the quayside we found a rowing-boat to take us to Bolgatty Island for 25 rupees.

The story continues with Bolgatty.

Bolgatty

Bolgatty Island and its Hotel – Kerala, January 1999

This follows on from Train to Cochin where we at arrived by train at Cochin and taken a rowing-boat ferry to Bolgatty Island and checked-in at the Bolgatty palace hotel.

We had made a reservation at the Bolgatty Palace hotel, ‘the oldest existing Dutch mansion outside Holland’. It didn’t look or feel much like a Dutch mansion. I’d told the man on the telephone that we’d arrive by 5pm. We got there at 4.30 and he immediately knew who we were, seeming in a way somewhat disappointed to see us. Possibly he had promised to room to someone else on the assumption that we would not turn up.

The Bolgatty Palace

The Bolgatty Palace, it seems, was being rebuilt, and the only rooms were on circular huts in the garden, of which there seemed to be just four. The man had been holding one for someone until 5pm in case we turned up, and we did.

Inside our pod, which was known as the ‘Honeymoon Cottage’, was a circular bed with sheets that opened at the centre, ie two single sheets and bedcovers meeting at the centre. Why?

We went and sat at a table by the lake for a drink. Just one other table was occupied, by an Indian man and his girlfriend both dressed in western clothes. By his dress, his supercilious snarling look, his height and the fact that he conversed with the waiters in English, we guessed he was a Hindi-speaker from the north, who clearly saw himself as sophisticated. He and his girlfriend were eating what Indians who fancy themselves always seem to choose from the menu when they want to appear chic: a plate of chips with tomato ketchup.

Bolgatty Island

We decided to take a look around the island and to our surprise found it heavily-populated. Our rowing boat had taken us to a park in which the Bolgatty Palace was located. It was a very Indian park, with piles of rubbish everywhere and a handkerchief of grass, a lake frontage, and a café; in fact because of Bolgatty Palace, two cafés. People came from the mainland on a ferry and paid a rupee to enter this park, take a stroll round the litter, and then take the ferry back again.

The public ferry cost 50 paese, one fiftieth of what we paid for the rowing boat, and pulled in at a jetty no more than 100 yards from the rowing boat’s one. We could have got that instead.

Outside of the park the island was a mass of tiny streets and houses, with the inevitable sound-system blasting Indian pop music down the main street.

Dinner at the Bolgatty

Back at the hotel we took a cold shower – no hot water in the hotel – then went down for dinner.

We decided to eat inside as there were a lot of mosquitoes about. No one else was in the dining room of plastic chairs and tables except for the staff; three of four of them watching the telly.

They found us a table under the fastest-turning of the ceiling fans, turned off the telly, and sprang into action, presenting us with a menu. After we had perused this for a bit a man came up to us and said: ‘Please may I make a suggestion. Our speciality tonight is a speciality of Kerala, with prawns’.

OK, let’s go for it, nothing on the menu looked that appealing, mnostly it was chips with tomato ketchup.

The prawn dish was superb. An upturned pot of beautifully-cooked rice surrounded by a ring of prawns spiced mildly with a masala, a mix of spices. Surrounding this were vegetables: carrot, celery, peas. Good choice.

We slept that night in our circular bed, under a circular mesh canopy in which some flies had been trapped over the generations by the blast from the ceiling fan overhead.

The story continues with Ferry for Breakfast.

Fort Cochin

Fort Cochin and the Chinese Fishing Nets

This follows-on from Ferry for Breakfast, the beginning of our trip by ferry from Bolgatty to Fort Cochin with a stop for breakfast on the way.

Another Ferry

Yet another ferry terminal consisting of dingy, concrete sheds that have not been painted for years, with a grill with a little hole at the bottom for passing your money through.

This one was a little different because it had a separate queue for men and for women. There was nothing to indicate this – nothing so information-rich is ever provided in India – it’s just that I noticed that women went to one queue and men to the other. Both queues ended up at the same window, the ticket clerk served first a man, then a woman, then a man, then a woman.

On the ferry,too, we noticed that the women went to the front of the boat and the men to the rear. Between them in the centre of the boat was the driver and the engine.

The segregation was not absolute. There were one or two men in the women’s section and vice-versa. It was as if there used to be a rule about this but it had been rescinded some time ago, habits dying hard.

Chinese Fishing Nets

A short ride over to Fort Cochin and: rickshaws once again. Ernakulam, which is part of Cochin really, had no rickshaws. This was because, we learned, they were on strike. The strike did not seem to apply to Fort Cochin however.

And Chinese fishing nets, right by the harbour. Four or five men pulled on a rope and out of the water came a large net, attached at each corner to a couple of thin tree-trunks lashed together at their end, thus in effect making a double-length tree-trunk. The four double tree-trunks join at the top so the tghat whole thing makes a kind of large shopping basket. Further joined tree-trunks connect the top of the shopping basket to a pivot on the quayside made from a large log, and also from this pivot come other tree-trunk poles, the other end of this being where the ropes that the men were pulling was attached to.

The men hauled on the ropes with a rhythmic, swaying motion of the body, the net came out of the water and the men clambered along a pole, one of them holding a fishing net. They hauled in the large net and got out of it what generally seemed to be at most one or two tiny, tiny, fish.They had to be quick about this as the aggressive Indian crows were already perched on the far side of the main net, waiting to pounce.

Then the men pushed up their end of the fulcrum and the net lowered into the water again.

It was all very peaceful watching the regular raising and lowering of the nets as we sat on a low wall in the shade of a tree, and for additional interest we could look at the oil and chemical tankers, navy vessels and top-heavy looking container ships going constantly by, in and out of Cochin harbour.

The story continues with School Sports and Cemeteries.

School Sports and Cemeteries

People in Fort Cochin – Kerala, January 1999

This follows-on from Fort Cochin to where we had come and seen the Chinese fishing nets in operation. We looked around Fort Cochin and met a man who wanted to show us a presbytery.

After watching the swaying of the Chinese fishing nets we bought some postcards from a man who hangs about there precisely for that purpose. We asked him for directions to the post office for some stamps.

Through the better-off area of Cochin. Sunshine, flowers and walled houses. We came across a large church and Hilary went for a look inside. Standing outside, I could hear what sounded like a school sports day taking place on an area of green, or more precisely dirty yellow, adjacent.

Get those legs up now.

Sure enough, a school sports day was exactly what it was. Conducted in English. We arrived just in time for the old-boys 800 metres. ‘Come along the old boys, show us what you can do, get those legs up now; up, up, up, up!’ The female announcer encouraged the runners in shrill, bossy English. The boys ran in bare feet but otherwise unchanged from their everyday shirt and trousers or lungi. One of them duly won and was applauded; one or two gave up from cramp or exhaustion.

Next the junior boys 800 metres. ‘There&rsuo;s still time for the junior boys to participate. Junior boys please report to the starting line now. Come on you junior boys, here’s your chance to show what you can do for your school!’ And so on.

More churches

We wandered on. We came across another church, Catholic this time, which seemed to be all locked up but some workmen were using a side door so Hilary went in for a look around from there.

We were looking for the Dutch Cemetery, which the guidebook told us contained the graves of Dutch settlers from way back. Often, these graveyards can be quite evocative of a time we mostly only read about in abridged form.

By following the small-scale map we had we came to a crossroads with what looked like a cemetery entrance on it. It turned out to be a presbytery. As usual, when you stop to look at something in India, a man comes by and says: &lssquo;Come and take a look. See the gardens and the birds!’

The birds in the garden were, as we suspected, in cages, including a very miserable-looking eagle in terribly cramped conditions, who was sharing its cage with a crow that had got in there somehow and couldn’t find its way out.It seemed to be just as distressed as the eagle.

Pepper plants

The man showed us pepper, lemon and guava – the first time we had seen pepper growing and we were surprised to find it was an ivy-like climbing weed.

The story continues with Palm Toddy.

Palm Toddy

We Buy a Bottle from a Man in the Street

This follows-on from School Sports and Cemeteries in which, while we were looking for the Dutch cemetery we met a man who wanted to show us things, or more accurately, sell us things.

When we left the presbytery the man asked us if we knew the meaning of the word, Kerala. No. It means coconut. Had we tasted the slightly alcoholic drink made from an extract of the coconut flower? No. Would we like to join him for a drop? Yes. It will cost 60 rupees for a bottle, plus another 60 for a bottle for him, and he will drink his later. OK then, 60 for a bottle plus a 60 tip, we’ll go for it.

Almost stung for £3.80

We walked along the road and the man said: ‘Give me 120 rupees and wait there, by this shop’. Unfortunately, and typically, I only had 100 rupee notes, so it meant giving him 200 and asking for change. ‘OK, I get some.’

And off he went with our 200 rupees. Hilary was furious: ‘That’s the last you’ll see of him’, she said, ‘And we’ve just thrown away 200 rupees’. OK, so we’ve been stung for £3.80. It’s a gamble – I can gamble with £3.80.

After waiting some time we were just about to put it down to win-some-lose-some when who should we see coming along the road but the man, a plastic bag in one hand and some dirty rupee notes in the other. He opened the bag to show a bottle inside, handed over it and the notes, shook our hands and said bye bye.

We have some palm wine.

So we have a bottle of coconut palm wine, or maybe water, or maybe he’d wee’d in it. Later that night we opened the bottle and smelled. It certainly smells like coconut. Taste a drop. Yes, that’s palm wine all right. Very distinctive. Nasty aftertaste. But it’s not everyone who goes home from their package tour with a bottle of palm wine in their rucksack.

The story continues with The Dutch Cemetery and the Synagogue.

The Dutch Cemetery and the Synagogue

Crumbling Cemetery, Muslim Traders, Cochin Jewish Heritage

This follows-on from Palm Toddy, where we bought a bottle of palm wine on our way to find the Dutch Cemetery.

Sad Neglect at the Cemetery

After a further walk and a few askings for directions we found the Dutch Cemetery. There was a sign outside in English and Malayalam, oddly not in Dutch, telling us what is was.

Inside was really sad. Broken tombstones, no inscriptions still legible, and the whole place covered with a mass of pink-flowered convolvulus. What a shame.

A Most Un-Indian Post Office

We went to have some lunch in a restaurant we’d spotted earlier,passing on the way the post office we’d be unable to find earlier. A most un-Indian post office, I just walked up to the counter and bought some stamps, no fuss, no forms to fill in, the stamps of the right denomination and complete with glue on the back. Nice city, Cochin.

Lunch was Chinese chop-suey and Indian crab and vegetable, and the restaurant, outside under a canopy with fans whirling in the ceiling, was hot, really hot.

To the Synagogue

Back out in the midday sun, we decided to catch a rickshaw to the Jewish Synagogue, located in the region of Cochin known as Jew Town.

It was closed for lunch so we took a look in some shops and bought Hilary two dresses for 850 rupees (£15), one silk one cotton. Most of the traders in this are are Muslim. Muslim traders are notably more pushy and keener to do a deal than the Hindu and Christian ones; more sense of what we might want too. We tried a Hindu-run shop and it was very different, with a small slender man in large glasses sewing away at a machine in the corner and a man in a lunghi trying to sell Hilary trousers that were either too small or white when she’d asked for coloured. No business there.

The synagogue reopened and we got there at the same time as a party of American Christians on a tour. They were being so loud and insensitive that we waited outside until they had finished.

Joseph the Pastor

Also waiting outside for them was their Indian guide, a pastor named Joseph. He had visited the States as a guest of this group and they ‘help’ his church as part of their bit for the Third World. He was ashamed of India’s grottiness, the unpainted walls at the boat terminal, the litter. It was hard to know what to say, really.

The Synagogue

The American group came out and we went it. It was a bit hard to fathom it all, not knowing much about Judaism. The floor tiles were worth a fortune – we thought they might be hand-painted Delft, what with the Dutch connection, but they turned out to be Chinese. It also looked like someone at some time had had a passion for lamps, as a great number in various shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling. Write-up on the synagogue and pic here.

There didn’t seem to be any Jews around. Cochin is said to have only 50 or so Jews left and maybe they only come on Saturdays, when the synagogue is closed to the public. A little picture gallery gave us a history of the Jews in Cochin, they go back a long way to BC days and there are still 5,000 Jews in India, so it said, though only 50 or so in Cochin.

There is a Dutch Palace in this part of Cochin but we couldn’t find it and it was still very hot outside, so we decided to retrace our ferry journey back to Ernakulam, where our friendly bullying host at the hotel had told us there was an elephant festival at 5pm.

The story continues with The Elephant Festival, when I write it.