No complainings

Mid January 2011

I am working hard to resist opening with “Greetings and salutations to my beloved friends and hoping that your good selves are in fine health and fettle”. Indian verbal extravagance is infectious and as one prone to verbal infections of all sorts, I will doubtless fall prey to its gravitational pull during the course of this current missive and I humbly beg your good selves to be patient. 

The Gama Residency in Cochin (Kochi) is very pleasant. It has air conditioning, hot water (mostly) and is spotlessly clean all for around $44 a night with breakfast included. Kochi is very cruisy after Mumbai. Its main focus has always been fishing. The Portugese arrrived here in the 1600’s and then had a bit of an all in brawl with the Dutch about who was in control before the British put their stamp on it in the 18th century. The two other main influences are the Chinese and believe it or not, the Jews who supposedly arrived here in 1AD. I went to Jew Town, as it is called, yesterday. There is a synagogue with a couple of cranky guys in skull caps but apart from that and the Jewish cemetery there is not much obvious palpable evidence of their presence. I don’t know what I expecting - an Indian George Castanza in a turban? Near the synagogue in Jew Town are some great antique shops - quite classy - a step above the usual trinket emporiums. I suspect that the Jews and the Indians found that they shared a facility for trade and commerce, got along rather well and ended up blending in every way. From what I  can gather the Jews never inflicted themselves on India in the way that the Europeans did from the 17th century onwards. Architecturally Kochi is a melange of boxy Mediterranean, ornate Portugese churches and the crumbling British Raj. 

I have always thought that the ruins of the Raj, particularly in the bigger cities, give you a direct conduit to the feel of Dickens’ London. He is one of my all time favourites and his descriptions of stinking but fascinating alley ways, grinding poverty, oblivious extravagant wealth, loud chaotic markets, spivs and con men, self important officials and the wonderful meandering theatre of life in the streets all still ring through loud and clear in India. The theatre of life here, is a lot less harsh and probably less dramatic than in Mumbai but is easier to slip into. The soundscape is different. I am woken to the sound of birds and the slow moving intermittent stirrings of the city coming to life. In the last ten or so minutes as I have been writing this, outside my window the sound of a street vendor fades out as some bells fade in from some music in the block of flats next door then somebody chopping a tree and now, just now, in these few seconds, the Muezzin, the Muslim call to prayer from the Mosque down the road dominates. But unlike the soundtrack of Mumbai, there isn’t the sense of four different orchestras, a couple of jazz bands, three techno night clubs and four rappers all competing for attention by increasing the volume in leaping increments. The sounds here seem to blend, fade in and out and around. 

On the beachfront  about fifteen minutes walk from the hotel, the fishermen work with their giant fulcrums. They consist of giant fishing nets on one end and weights on the other end that facilitate the nets being pulled up. The Kerala fishermen apparently learned this from visiting Chinese and have been doing it for the last couple of hundred years. I read though, that the method is dying out because of new fishing technologies. The beachfront is a very pleasant place to sit with a cup of chai and read. I have been working my way through Hilary Mantel’s giant novel “A Place of Greater Safety” about the French Revolution. It’s always great to read a book through the prism of an experience outside of your normal workaday life. The book so far (p.200) seems to be about class and power. The first part hones in on well intentioned bourgeois and nobles, people who wanted to help those with less but the reader knows that these very same well intentioned bourgeois will be victims of the tsunami of events. 

There is a strong streak of Catholic genuine good intention here in Kerala. When I bought my ticket from the Fort Cochin Tourist Office (private) for a boat backwater tour (lunch provided) of some of the villages in the archipelago I encountered Mr Thomas who sported a large crucifix and a Madonna and Child statue on his counter . He was so full of good intention that I was a little suspicious. He described the tour in great detail “You will be picked up from your hotel with other tourists you will be getting onto our best boat...if you have any complainings - tour complainings, lunch complainings, complainings about the drivers, complainings about the villagers, complainings about anything, I, my good self Mr Thomas, Manager of the Seven Hour Backwater Tour is personally responsible and may be addressed and telephoned on number 9998776659. See it is written on all tickets etc etc.”.  After meeting Mr Thomas yesterday I was a little suspicious. What had happened recently to provoke this frenzy of self justification?  I asked people at the hotel and I called the Government Tourist Office. Everyone said the same thing. Mr Thomas’s tour is fantastic. Really good value, particularly with lunch. As a well intentioned bourgeois, I felt a bit ashamed of doubting him and hurried back to the Fort Cochin Tourist Office (private) to buy my ticket. He was delighted to see me. 

The tour as expected, was really good. The opportunity to hook up with other tourists was also really enjoyable. I befriended a Swedish couple around my age with whom I have subsequently met up with, a young couple from Germany, a rowdy group of 7 or 8 Spanish thirty somethings, a woman who lives on alone on a houseboat in Oxford, a young refreshingly quiet American woman from California,  and a group of five young women from New Zealand who have just completed their university studies and have been volunteering at a school in Nepal. There was also a woman about my age from America who was at odds with everybody else, including Mr Thomas’s acolytes who were running the show. She complained about everything - we weren’t going fast enough (this as we glided gently through the beautiful tropic backwaters), we weren’t seeing enough, there wasn’t enough explanation, the rowdy Spanish group were speaking too loudly in Spanish. I don’t know how that she wasn’t aware that the rowdy Spaniards were obviously talking about her. They’d laugh uproariously at her every complaint. On the way back it got it a borderline when they started physically mimicking her. 

Every day I walk and walk and walk. I try to talk to as many people as possible. I often don’t get much except a few perfunctory phrase exchanges because not too many people outside of hotels and restaurants have very good English. Yesterday I encountered some boys playing cricket and joined in briefly as the butt of jokes about my bowling and Ricky Ponting.  Most of the tourists here at the moment seem to be German or Swedish for some reason or other. With the exception of my new Swedish friends, Karin and John, they tend to be reserved and respond with only frozen courtesy to conversational gestures. I had quite a long conversation with a New Zealand man traveling with his family about India in general but apart from that I’ve been on my own. I don’t mind too much - it’s quite interesting to observe people, particularly couples, in restaurants and out walking. Besides it’ll be quite good training for next week in the ashram where silence is observed for four hours a day.  

I am so glad that I came to India again. As always it’s changed the channel in my head.