Itchy Feet

Cochin has not changed a bit in all the years that I have been going there on work. True, the airport is larger, glitzier and farther than it used to be ten years ago. There is more chrome and glass all over the city, Subways and Coffee Days alongside the Dwarakas and smaller eating places of old. Mammooty and Mohanlal beam at you alternately from all the hoardings in the city. And then suddenly, near the old airport area, there is a faded hoarding with Amitabh Bacchan with a - do not throw your garbage out into the open. Why, I wonder...

I had a few hours in the morning before my flight to Bombay and I decided to explore the Fort Kochi area; the weather was cool by Kerala standards and I had a car with Jomon the driver eager to double up as local guide and broken-Tamil translator. We crossed many bridges, most of them built recently to make local it easier to travel through Cochin, with its many tiny islands now part of the main city. We then drove through narrow lanes, romba neraiyya humbu - too many humps - speedbreakers - on the road because of schools in the area, Jomon informed me seriously. Road humps notwithstanding, we narrowly missed being run down by a bus headed towards navel base at breakneck speed.

Fort Kochi could be charming; centuries of history and culture squeezed tight within a few square kilometers of narrow lanes all leading to the sea. Now there is garbage all over, there is kitsch all the way from Rajasthan, there is the dust and mud of of construction.



Empty coconut shells lie strewn all over the place, alongside lie empty boats, colorful in their fresh coats of paint but looking tired and just wanting to sleep through the heat of the day... Local guides take groups of foreigners around relating tales of the portugese and the chinese that sound too rehearsed to be true. Fishermen wait for foreigners to walk up to them before they start operating their fishing nets; only two hundred rupees madam, one of them told me, offering me a "dicsount rate" in honor of my Tamil.



Despite all this, Fort Kochi is charming. Just as you get off the car at the Vasco Da Gama (he is all over the place here), you catch sight of the chinese fishing nets waiting for you, waiting for the right tide to begin their descent into the sea. Picturesque and pretty, these nets which operate on a simple system, were brought all the way from China centuries ago. Many of them lie broken today, and my driver says that few local fishermen know how to repair them. Now they seem to act more as tourist traps rather than traps for fish.





Just down the road is St. Francis Church, built in 1503, some say by the Vasco man himself, definitely by the Portugese, in any case. The church is undergoing renovation work now, but despite the buzz of the cleaners and carpenters, there is a sense of peace and quiet inside. The high wooden ceilings and the brilliant stained glass have clearly withstood centuries of well-meaning renovation. On one side is a rectangle where Vasco Da Gama was said to be buried initially, before his remains were shipped off to Lisbon.





Just as I walk out of the church, a guide escorts a group of middle-aged English women, he leads them to a step where they can sit comfortably while removing their shoes. In India it is customary to remove shoes before entering any temple, he says in English that sounds more like Malayalam. It is amazing how India swallows up centuries of foreign influence, churches become temples and English is embraced in one fell swoop into the numerous local dialects and accents of the country.

My last stop was at the Dutch Palace, now also the local archaeological museum. The palace - museum, not as popularly mentioned as the fishing nets and the church, was a wonderful surprise. For an entry fee of Rs.2, I spent an hour gazing at the collection of arms and coins and palanquins, and more importantly the fascinating murals in the first floor and the basement (which is actually at ground level, but is reached by narrow steep steps from inside the museum). Most of the murals depict scenes and stories from the Ramayana. there is also one entire blank wall in the basement, where there was at some time in the past, murals depicting the entire Kumarasambhava by Kalidasa. It has now been sketched in black and displayed along with the information board.

The murals were breath-taking in their detail, with their rich vermillons and vibrant ochres and deep reds of vegetable dyes. The blues and indigos, so much a feature of mural work in the North, especially that associated with Rajasthan, were prominently missing here; only one solitary figure of Vishnu carried dark greens, which seemed too fresh to have been painted centuries ago. The basement also had an inside room filled with what can only be described as the Kamasutra of the gods; siva playing with vishnu-maya, parvati looking on in anger and envy in one; siva playing with parvati herself, seated on his lap, in another. Krishna in rasa leela, the gopis dancing intoxicated by love and lust for him.

The huge compound also contains a temple of the bhagavati, the protector deity of the rajas. The palace was built and presented by the Portugese to the Raja of Kochi, Vira Kerala Varma in 1555 AD. It came to be known as the Dutch Palace from 1663 after they carried out some renovations in the palace.



In all, a couple of hours well spent. Fort Kochi has more, notably the famous Jew Town, also home to the oldest Synagogue in the country, built in 1568. I intend to visit it the next time I am in Cochin. And also wait patiently to watch the chinese nets in action. Trapping fish and tourists alike cleverly.

The Dubai Shoppping Festival had just began - earlier than usual - when I went to Dubai. And it was the weekend before Christmas. Half the world seemed to have landed in Dubai at that time, to shop, and shop some more. One crazy evening at the maddeningly crowded Mall of Emirates, and I decided to stay away from the mall-mess.

I hopped on to an open top bus that Sunday and explored Dubai on foot, by bus and by boat. I discovered more "shopping" opportunities in Dubai - the souks, or local markets, filled with the sounds and smells of the Middle East and South Asia. Tiny shops selling incense sticks and pictures of goddess Lakshmi. And cheerful yellow marigold flowers that belong right in any shop lining the main street leading to the large temple in any town in South India. And then the ads on the walls announcing "bed space available for Tamil Bachelor. Please contact..." it is possible to close your eyes and wonder for a minute about where you are.




I walked through narrow winding lanes, each sharp turn leading into narrower lanes, each filled with some sort of "speciality goods" or the other. These souks seem right out of the distant past, with their deep red high arches and wooden lanterns that bring the lanes alive after the world outside gets dark. For these souks represent a world inside another world.



The shop-keepers along these souks seemed to be as much of detached observers s we, the tourists were. Chatting among themselves, sipping glass after steaming glass of fragrant tea, they seemed to know the real buyer from the rest of the interested crowd. Most often, they simply ignored your presence, or welcomed you into their little group of gossiping men with a smile.





Silks and cotton, spices and nuts, silver and gold... Large air-conditioned shops, their windows glittering with all the gold on show, and small roadside stalls, their wares seeming to wink at your right out of the tall rickety tables on which they are displayed.







Surely, there is a lot to buy in Dubai!

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Note : Here is my earlier post on Dubai on Itchy Feet- Dubai and the -est obsession

Pointing out through the window of his living room, G said, See that building there, the one with all the cranes.... that is going to be the tallest building in the world. I am guessing the look on my face said 'how interesting, yaaaaawn'. Dubai is suddenly obsessed with being and building the largest, the biggest, the mostest, he explained. The new airport coming up is supposed to be the largest in the world. There we go again, I thought.

The next day, on the open top hop-on-hop-off bus, the guide shreiked into the mike at intervals of five minutes, pointing and waving franctically (she was in a state of feverish excitement, you must understand) - this building you see is going to be the tallest in the world when it is completed in 2009. And she added, there is provision on the top to add on more floors in case any other building in the world overtakes this one, so our Dubai always has the tallest building in the world. How reassuring.

Then we were treated to the sight of the eighth tallest building in the world, the guide trilling on with the names and exact heights of each of the seven taller than this one. No, I do not exaggerate. The heights, down to the last inch or whatever it takes to be on that list.

This is a land obsessed with creating. And why not? the city itself was created out of nothingness - this lot of buildings here, this was just sand two years ago... And to think I found Singapore fake. Everything in Dubai is created to attract attention - snow and ski slopes inside a shopping mall, Christmasy decorations and teddy bears (or were they polar bears?) in red coats singing Merry Christmas in an Islamic country, a hotel built on reclaimed land to resemble a sail-boat (this, the Burj Al Arab, incidentally is not among the -est buildings, but it does happen to be the only seven star hotel in the world. So there).






But I am not complaining. I loved it all... Camels in pink and yellow, the dumb looks on their faces intact in The Camel Company. Breath-taking sunsets along the beach, the sails of the Burj Al Arab hotel, magically opening up to the sun in front of your eyes.





The creek with its traditional abras (tiny taxi boats) ferrying locals in a hurry and tourists with all the time on their hands across. Old and new mosques with tall minarets reaching to the very skies, the sun sitting like the flame on top of a candle, and beautful detailing in blue on the walls (with a lift inside to get to the top floor!)







I cheerfully gave the desert safari a miss, keeping my tender back in mind. Instead, I hopped on to the tour bus and spent the day riding around the city, taking in the smells and sounds. And the unexpected bursts of colors everywhere in the desert city. And shivering slightly in the chilly breeze in the middle of the day. I spent the evenings at eating places by the creek, watching the city lights twinkle in the distance, looking up suddenly to catch the fireworks that go off in the city every night during the DSF.



Dubai is full of these surprises. Ignore the obvious, the cliches that Dubai has been selling hard and fast for a long time now - yes, even the shopping - scratch a little deeper and there is a surprisingly modest and fun Dubai.

Note : Did I say ignore the shopping? Expect my next post Dubai or not to buy up on Itchy Feet as soon as I find the time for it.

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Update : Read Jai Arjun's Dubai Nuggets for more on Dubai's state of perpetual wannabeness. ...This is bizarrely appropriate, for more than anything else Dubai gives the impression of being perpetually in labour, straining to produce one of the great metropolises-cum-tourist centres.

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One more note : as promised - Dubai or not to buy? finally on Itchy Feet