Kochi, the capital city of Kerala, is really two towns: Fort Cochin and Ernakulum. It is shaped EXACTLY like the Bay Area with Fort Cochin being San Francisco and Ernakulum being the whole East Bay with downtown S.F. thrown in. We stayed in the cuter, quieter, breezier Fort Cochin. We had several days in Kochi because we loved Kerala so much that we delayed our flight out of India.It was noon on the 17th and after checking into our modest guesthouse with the not-so-modest naked Scandinavians on the upstairs deck, we went for a walk and started baking in the heat. Then somehow we came up with the crazy idea of renting a scooter - it just seemed like it would be fun and cool, literally. Madhavi had never driven one and the last time I had was 15 years ago as a teenager in Bermuda, but we just showed up at a motorbike shop, gave this kid my Michigan driver's license, he gave us a key, we took off...... and we were hooked! It was so fun! We would go on to ride one pretty much every day, including on the twisting cliff-side and monster bus-laden roads of Munnar - don't worry Moms and Dads:
we're out of India, back in our minds, and travelling on two feet or three-four wheels now. Besides, our wounds are healing well.Two experiences in Kochi really capture its essence: the Kashi Art Cafe in a little way and Moosa our rickshaw driver in a big way. Before discussing them here are some rapid-fire moments in Kochi rather than the play-by-play: the first cruise on two wheels with the little engine whirling and the cool breeze flowing and us giggling like we were kids again; church after church and the major presence of a uniquely Indian Christianity; Jew Town (yes, that's the name) with its adorable spice stalls and bookshops, that great tailor who made wonderful $2 super-light linen shirts/pants for us, and the centuries-old synagogue with lovely Chinese floor tiles patronized by the few dozen remaining elderly Orthodox Jews in town; pulling rope with local fishermen at the gigantic and fascinating Chinese fishing nets; the tropical opulence of white wine in the courtyard of Malabar House; the colorful and painfully slow Kathakali silent play; losing a wallet; banana-leaf wrapped fresh fish imbued with coconut flavors served with pure pineapple juice with live sitar and tabla notes in the air under an orange blue sky on the seaside deck of Fort House Hotel.
At lunchtime you could find us at the Kashi Art Cafe. At the end of a narrow street just off the bay, the cafe is a welcoming open-air space where every day a group of quiet unassuming Keralans prepare a single deliciously simple vegetarian dish with a creative soup (carrot-orange cream one day) and garlic bread. We always had this with a cold lime soda sitting under a merciful fan and surrounded by a panoply of tall plants.
Besides being simply delightful, Kashi was also quite responsible, refusing to serve anything with plastic - they purified water themselves and served it in a cold glass bottle. Though most of the patrons were Westerners, this place just exuded character and typified laid-back and progressive Kerala.One night we decided to go to the Cuban Film Festival in Ernakulum, so after wisely turning in our scooter we looked down the road and saw an autorickshaw heading our way. The driver was an eager boyish-looking 20-something who immediately got us laughing by asking for too much money and justifying it with "c'mon, I got a/c and the ride is like a Ferrari", both claims being comically absurd to anyone who's been in a rickshaw. As we started wheezing along at a max speed of 25 km/hr, he said "my name is Michael Schumacher but people call me Moosa". He continued the drive-by comedy with "you know her", pointing to a billboard, "she is a famous movie star and she is also my girlfriend, though she don't know that." Laughing and looking back for approval, he continues "our relationship is one-way street!". After finding out we're American, he said "you like the Beegees?" and before we could answer he busted out with "stayin' alive, ah ah ah ah" and even did the whole boogy finger to the sky thing. All this was fine, but after every joke he HAD to look back at our reactions while continuing to drive down an INDIAN city road! This meant that all manner of vehicles and animals would whizz by or veer out of the way while he was looking the wrong way howling at his own jokes.
So this guy seemed like just a clown, but his unbelievably slow pace (took an hour to get there) and the fact that we had the wrong movie time (another hour to get back) meant that we got to know a different side of him. After he proved his Spanish skills with "hasta la vista baby", I asked him if he knew what Arnold does now and he said "Yes, he is the governor of California; I watch the news". As the conversation turned to politics, he only became more animated: "Bush is not a smart man; all he thinks about is war, war, war but he does not understand the world". His commentary thereafter illustrated why Amartya Sen, the great Indian thinker, calls Kerala "the most socially advanced state in India". Moosa explained everything from the strict enforcement of minimum wage ("if the boss pays less than 200 rupees one day, the next day there are protests") to women's rights ("women run the home here, and if a nightclub or bar opens up, all the mothers get together and protest to shut it down") to the brilliant public education campaign that helped reduce Kerala's fertility rate to among the lowest in the world.
Moosa had free English-medium schooling up to age 18, and that he was a rickshaw driver that was so at ease with English was impressive. He is "communist", as is Kerala's government, and thinks religions cause problems, but he also studies all the major faiths and said "I believe in God in my heart". Revealing a critical eye towards pop culture, he described Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, two major Indian movie stars, as elitists whose films "are not about us, our lives". When summing up why the then-ruling BJP party lost so badly in elections a couple years back, he came up with an absolutely brilliant line: "people eat rice, not computers".
The conversation turned to money and how he may move to an Arab Gulf country to make extra cash (as do many Keralans) and dreams of buying a house for himself and his 8-month pregnant wife. But he finished this line of discussion by saying "but I don't want too much money; money brings problems; now I go home, be with my family, have dinner, go to sleep, just like that, no worries." As our time was coming to an end, I was almost hoping he would invite us to his house to meet his family and continue the great conversation. Instead, as we approached our hotel to end a perfectly pointless and wonderfully memorable two-hour drive, he left us with a poignant refrain: "This is Kochi: I am born here, I am living here, I will die here".
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