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Cochin
Impressions of India March 6-9
Someone said that India remains an enigma, a
perplexity, a puzzle you simply can’t solve.
To say the least! I’d
call it a land of massive but fascinating contradictions.
As we sailed from the Arabian Sea into Cochin, our
entrance into this nation of paradoxes, I didn’t really know what to
expect. But I was eager for
my first experience in this nation that today possesses 20 percent of the
world population and in fifty years will overtake China as the most
populous nation on earth.
Cochin, the place where Christopher Columbus intended
to land, is called the Queen of the Arabian Sea for its beautiful lagoons,
lakes and lush greenery. You
see all this and palm trees and villas on the hillsides as you sail
through the backwaters of the dredged harbor heading for Willingdon
Island. This would be a gentle entry into India, I thought as we
disembarked. Hardly!
Immediately we hit a sub-tropical wall of heat and
humidity! By the time we reached the bottom of the gangway, I was so hot
and sticky and unable to breathe the dense humid air that I seriously
considered retreating back to the comfort of our air-conditioned R2
stateroom.
But we had been warned that the heat would be
oppressive, and by the time I reached the nearby beach,
I was ready for an all-to-ambitious day of walking through this
ancient city famed in history
books as the burial place of the
Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama. The area holds claim to being the
oldest European settlement in India.
The Portuguese flag was first raised here in 1500;
Da Gama arrived in Cochin in 1502 and died here in 1524.
We visited his gravestone in St. Francis church near
the beach that day, though his remains were shipped back to Portugal in
1538. Just as
interesting as encountering the references to this American school-book
explorer is the fact that in 1503, a different little-known Portuguese
explorer, Alfonso de Albuquerque, arrived with a half dozen ships full of
settlers and built Fort Cochin as well as India’s first European church,
St. Francis, where his more famous countryman,
da Gama, was buried. (I’m
sure not many people in New Mexico know of
their capitol city namesake, Albuquerque’s conquests. I had never
heard of him.)
Cochin is one of the oldest ports on India’s west
coast, and the streets behind
the docks present colorful images of old godowns (warehouses), and open
courtyards piled with betel nuts and fragrant with the scent of
cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and coffee.
Reaching the beach, I wandered along, carefully
eyeing aging fishermen raising their enormous Chinese fishing nets held
together by huge bamboo poles. These fishing nets arrived here in the time
of Kubla Khan and were first traded for rich spices Cochin offered in
exchange for the Chinese fishing nets.
These fisherman are the direct descendants of those original Indian
fishermen, and as
I climbed up carefully onto a rickety dock and smiled, nodded and
gestured for a photo op, I was welcomed by the friendly fishermen. For rupees.
This was an early start to an indescribably hot
walking tour through this colorful city. I learned again it was founded by
the Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by the Dutch in
1602, and eventually taken over by the British in 1795—a familiar
pattern of European governance we had already encountered earlier in
Malaysia.
The narrow winding streets of Cochin are lined with
tiny stalls and vendors hawking their wares.
Walking slowly in the heat, our guide led us first to the Dutch
Palace and then to the historic synagogue of Cochin.
The Dutch palace was built by the Portuguese in the middle of the
16th century, but was taken over in 1663 by the Dutch. It is filled with some of the best murals in India, and particularly in the bedchambers you can
see entire stories of the Ramayana--along with erotic depictions of Lord
Krishna and his female devotees.
Much as we appreciated the murals, we didn’t linger.
Heat and hunger were overtaking
us so we retrieved our shoes, and kept on hiking. Some of our colleagues were beginning to drop off in the heat
and return to the ship, but the boldest and bravest of us were determined
to stick it out.
From the Dutch Palace to the famous Patradeshi
Synagogue was a short walk through a dusty street lined with clay pots,
wooden carvings and brilliant
hanging silks and cotton skirts and saris. The story of the Jewish
settlement in Kerala (the state where Cochin is located), is a fascinating
tale of acceptance of the Jews in the 6th century BC, followed
by a larger wave of immigrants in the 1st century AD when Jews
fleeing Roman persecution in Jerusalem settled on the faraway Cochin
coast. This island remained a
haven and the Jewish colony flourished until the 16th Century
when the Portuguese leader Albuquerque destroyed their community.
The synagogue, one of the oldest in the world, had been built in
1568; when the Dutch came along in 1663 replacing the Portuguese, the
colony again lived without fear. Today, only two or three Jewish families remain but still
worship in the historic building. The
synagogue contains impressive floor of hand-painted blue willow tiles,
each one different, from China, beautiful 4th century copper
plates depicting a decree showing the
4th century Jewish community’s right to the nearby
land of Cranganore, and lovely blue and green blown glass globes suspended
from the two story ceiling..
By now it was early afternoon, the heat was
oppressive, and the long walk back to the busses wore us out.
Only the principle of shop till you drop kept some of the heartier
souls on shore until their rupees were gone. I returned to the ship.
This, my first day in India, left me eager for the
next morning to dawn. I
planned to skip the mysterious-sounding
ports of New Mangalore, Mormugao, and Goa and the initial port
arrival in Mumbai (Bombay) in favor of a journey to what I have dreamed of
for a lifetime----a visit to the majestic Taj Mahal.
Never mind the heat.
Never mind the cost. Never
mind the prospect of a trip so exhausting that it threatened to
ruin us for the rest of the cruise
while giving us just a few hours to sample just a taste of this
monument to love called the most beautiful building in the world.
My friends on the ship told me I was crazy to
undertake such a hurried trip.
They were wrong.
So, before breakfast on our second day in India, we
fearless souls gathered for a morning flight to Delhi.
The capital city of India inland and north would be our base for a
three-day adventure to see parts of India I would never otherwise be able
to see. Indeed, it was a
bone-wearying trip, but very exhausting moment was worth the effort.
The bus ride to the airport showed us the first
fascinating glimpses of what we were to observe many times over the next
several days— hordes of people and animals, crowds everywhere--village
women drawing water from the well, young and aged men sitting, standing,
arguing, selling, meditating in front of tiny cubicle dwelling and stalls with hanging wares of every sort imaginable, sacred
cows everywhere--ambling down
streets, foraging for food in the dirt,
tied to wooden stakes,
or more often wandering freely in fields or rummaging through trash heaps.
And pigs and piglets standing in the trash heaps or wandering along the
back alleys of the shacks. And
hordes of children, often alone, joining the crowds of “pavement
dwellers,” homeless people sitting , sleeping, or lying along roads,
gutters, fences, or in dirt fields or grassy areas-- sometimes sifting
through trash heaps, or digging in the dirt, washing their feet and bodies
or drinking from the communal water pump,
huddled in the shade of wooden
shacks or stick and plastic shelters.
These were the working class or the untouchables, the poorest of
the poor, but also many of the middle class who can’t afford homes also
live in the slums, our guides
told us.
The paradox of India is that at the same time that
you travel through mile after mile of slums,
you also see women in colorful saris,
others in the
two-piece casual dress and pants outfit called salwar-kameez, striding
purposefully along the streets on their way to work, men in Western wear
or more traditional outfits carrying cell phones and briefcases, and
children of the wealthy in sparkling school uniforms.
Bombay, where we arrived two days later, is the third costliest
city in the world, just after Hong Kong and New York, we were told.)
This was our introduction to India, even before
boarding the plane in New Mangalore.
At that airport, and even more intensely in Delhi, we
went through several extensive security checks, with thorough searches not
only of our baggage and handbags, but of our bodies as well. Lipstick in my pocket was my undoing through the four
searches that morning in Mangalore airport, and when I did not hang a tag
on my purse returning home in the Delhi airport, the guard sent me all the
way back to the beginning security search site and made me go through all
four stamp procedures all over. There
is no doubt India is very serious about catching potential bomb threats,
and we, the tourists, certainly agreed with the tight security we
encountered.
Arriving late afternoon, we headed toward our
five-star hotel on the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital city, by now
beginning to better expect the immense crush of crowds in this huge city,
which joins Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras as one of the four largest cities
in India.
Rose petals, soothing pools of cascading water
dropping from fountains, and lovely sand inscriptions greeted us in the
lobby of our elegant hotel. I
had a glorious private room replete with marble bathroom, king-size bed,
cold bottled water, everything one could desire –and feel guilty about--
in the midst of the indescribably poverty surrounding the gates of the
hotel. This disparity of
wealth overwhelmed us at every moment, but we vowed to accept and try to
understand what we were experiencing and attempt to digest and respect all
sides of Indian culture.
Three of us, Mary, Jean and I, decided to hop into a taxi and head for an early evening
excursion into the heart of Delhi to the Cottage Industries Center where
government-sponsored handicrafts of India were available---that’s
shopping to all the uninitiated!
As one guidebook says, “Only people with nerves of
steel should ride a taxi in Delhi.”
Truer words were never spoken!
We weren’t sufficiently prepared for the wildest
taxi ride any of us had ever suffered through.
Mohammed, the name apparently of all the craziest taxi drivers in
India—was intent on getting us to the center of town fifteen miles
away-- dead or alive--and several times we were sure it would be the
former. He careened in and
out of masses of moving and stationary bikes, tut-tuts, (the ubiquitous
motorized bike/autos), motorcycles, cars, busses, and horse drawn
carriages. Ignoring
arm-waving policemen, cows, chickens and goats in the road, red lights,
pedestrians, women and babies, ragged children jumping out in front of us
and begging at every median strip, dirt road obstacles and deep potholes,
on his taxi careened,
carrying three terrorized customers.
He actually hit the rear of one small vehicle stopped at a light,
backed off and kept going, pounding the roof with one hand, honking wildly
at every corner, yelling at other taxi drivers, and cutting off oncoming
traffic whenever he could. This
was a typical taxi ride in Delhi, we soon learned.
The ride cost us each exactly two dollars—and ten
years off our life.
Our second day in Delhi was bound to be a killer—in
fact, more of one than we even expected when we received our wake up call
at 4 a.m. the next morning. The
plan was to have juice and coffee, board busses to haul us to the Delhi
railroad station, and then board the so-called sleek Shatabdi Express at 5
a.m. bound for Agra. After a
three-hour train ride, we would arrive at Agra, head for the Mughal
Sheraton Hotel for breakfast, and then it we’d be off for a memorable
day of sightseeing culminating in our afternoon destination-- the Taj
Mahal.
After dinner we would transfer again to the Agra
Railroad Station, receive box
dinners to eat aboard the train for our three- hour trip back Delhi around
10:15 p.m., returning to our hotel until our early morning flight back to
Bombay and the ship.
This was intended to be about a 19-hour day of
touring. But it didn’t turn
out to be a 19-hour day at all! It
would be an unexpected 21-hour day by the time it was over.
But we didn’t know that the morning of March 8.
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