Subject: Cochin, pt. I
When I approach the synagogue, the heavy blue doors
are closed, but I notice they're not locked. I
hesitate: I'm early for the Friday evening prayers
that welcome the Sabbath. Perhaps the doors will open
in another ten minutes? An Indian man sees me
wavering, leans towards me and says, "Knock first,
then go in." I do as he says, feeling as if I am
stealing my way into some secret conclave. I half
expect someone to be waiting just behind the door,
ready to bark "Shalom aleichem!" at newcomers to see
if they know the password response: "Aleichem shalom."
But of course no such thing happens. I knock, I enter,
and I see a small group of old men and younger
Israelis gathered together by the entrance of the main
sanctuary. There's a pile of sandals by the door, and
a pile of mismatched yarmulkes unceremoniously dumped
on a ledge. I select a mauve satin number, slightly
tattered; printed on the inside is "Cochin Synagogue,
1568 - 1968: 400 Years."
The state of Kerala, formerly known as Travancore, is
a fertile strip that stretches inland no more than 100
miles, hemmed in by the Western Ghats, India's highest
mountain range south of the Himalayas; it has always
looked outward toward the sea, and the Malabar Coast
was known to the Phoenicians and the Romans, as well
as the Arabs and the Chinese. As Salman Rushdie puts
it in The Moor's Last Sigh, they came for the hot
stuff: the ginger, the cardamom, the cinnamon, and
above all the Malabar black pepper.
When the first Jews arrived is a matter of debate.
Some say that they came as traders during Solomon's
reign in the 10th century BCE, and there is a shred of
linguistic evidence: the Hebrew and Tamil words for
"peacock" are almost the same. The Babylonian Talmud,
written in the 6th century BCE, mentions a rabbi who
converted from Hinduism, though it fails to mention
where in India he was from. Certainly Jews were here
in Roman times, and legend has it that Saint Thomas
the Apostle was greeted on his arrival by a Jewish
girl playing the flute. And the local community traces
its origins to the Roman expulsion in 70 CE.
More curious still, and no less imprecise, is the
history of the Jewish kingdom at Cranganore, a bit
north of Cochin. The Pardesi Synagogue in Cochin still
houses the copper plates on which King Bhaskara Ravi
Varman I granted to one Joseph Rabban all the rights
of kingship, including tax revenues and the use of the
palanquin and the parasol. The local tradition holds
that the concession was made in 379 CE, but scholars
have placed the date anywhere from centuries earlier
to as late as the 10th century. Whenever it started,
however, there is no doubt that the Jewish community
of Cranganore was destroyed by the Portuguese in the
16th century, and eventually the survivors settled in
Cochin and grew rich in the spice trade.
As for the synagogue itself, it was first built in
1568, then destroyed by the Portuguese in 1662 and
rebuilt two years later. For all its age and fame,
it's a bit of a dumpy affair, which makes it a lot
like pretty much every other orthodox synagogue I've
ever been in. It's a squarish wooden box that's been
haphazardly fancied up with various touches that don't
quite go together: a forest of chintzy glass
chandeliers, some of them green and blue and red, to
hold oil lamps; a great carpeted wooden bimah (pulpit)
stranded out in the middle of the room like the prow
of a sinking ship; and of course the famous
blue-and-white Chinese tiles, brought from Canton in
the 18th century by Ezekial Rahabi. The
synagogue's promotional material declares proudly that
each tile is unique, but in fact they're all painted
with one of two patterns, and the uniqueness comes
simply from the fact that they were hand-painted, and
not all that nicely either. Seating is on mismatched
wooden and wicker benches that ring the open floor, or
occasionally wander into the middle of it.
I have come to this ancient synagogue here on the
eastern edge of the Jewish world because I want to see
and hear the ceremony and compare it with my own
Jewish experiences. (I came here also in 1998, but at
the time I was badly sunburned and possibly feverish,
and my memories of the event are gauzy at best.)
During one of our struggles over Judaism, I remember
my father telling me that I should learn to daven (to
recite the Hebrew prayers) because I would then be
able to walk into any synagogue anywhere in the world
and know what to do. Now, as I pick up a prayer book
from a heap of non-matching editions on a bench, I am
pleased to discover that I recognize most of the
prayers, even though this synagogue is Sephardic,
coming from the older Near Eastern stream of Judaism
rather than the European Ashkenazic tradition with
which I'm more familiar.
It turns out I'm the tenth man, so my arrival leads to
a fair bit of shuffling about by the old men who are
the remnant of Cochin's Jewish community. (Most of the
Cochin Jews have now moved to Israel.) Two old men
peer closely at the hand-scrawled Jewish calendar on
the wall, while another -- the only man in shoes --
strides purposefully toward the bimah, then veers left
and stands next to it. I notice that these men don't
look Indian at all. Unlike many of the Israelis in
their tattered lungis and kurtas, the Cochin Jews wear
slacks and short-sleeved shirts with collars. But it's
more than that. The Jews I've known look like the
people among whom their recent ancestors lived: they
look Polish, Russian, Gypsy, Turkish, German. But
these Jews look only Jewish, with skin a bit dark for
Middle Europe but several shades paler than anyone
else's in India, and their noses are Hebraically
prominent but not hooked like the noses of Central
Asia. There are no beards.
The prayers begin without preamble, and they go fast.
Despite my father's exhortation, I'm lost almost
immediately, and whenever I find my place again, it's
usually three pages past where I thought we were.
There's very little singing. L'chah Dodi, the
beautiful prayer for which the Ashkenazim have so many
wonderful melodies, flies past in a mumbled blur. I am
suddenly struck by just how unorthodox is my own brand
of so-called Orthodox Judaism, an American
reinterpretation of a Chassidic sect that arose in
Russia in the 17th century as a reform movement among
the Ashkenazim, who themselves are mere upstarts of
the last thousand years or so. While never exactly
isolated from the main body of Jews, the Cochin
community simply never experienced the vicissitudes of
European Jewish reform and counter-reform. I feel like
a Baptist among Coptics.
Part way through there's a power cut, and for a few
moments we pray in the light of the oil lamps, but
then the non-Jewish caretaker finds the switch for the
backup power, and fluorescent tubes flicker to life.
After the prayers, there's a quick kiddush
(sanctification of wine), and plastic cups are handed
around. I assume they get their kosher wine from
Israel these days, and certainly it tastes like the
classic syrupy rot-gut of Jewish ritual the world
over. And then it's done. Having begun at 6:40, we're
finished with the whole thing by ten after seven. There's
a little bit of socializing afterward, but it's all in
Hebrew, so I wander alone out into the unlit streets.
Despite the lack of light, I decide to walk back to
the hotel via the road that curves along the edge of
the narrow Cochin peninsula. The sultry night air smells of
cardamom and tea. Here and there shops are lit with
candles or kerosene lamps or backup generators, and
passing rickshaws and motorcycles cast their light as
well. I walk past Mattancherry Palace, a red-tiled
Portuguese construction that was later renovated by
the Dutch -- hence its alternate name, the Dutch
Palace -- and is most famous for a spectacular series
of erotic Hindu murals. Soon after I pass a church,
then a mosque, then a Catholic shrine as crowded and
chaotic as any Hindu temple. Eventually I reach the
great cantilevered Chinese fishing nets, gifts from
Kublai Khan, and opposite them I see Shana's Chinese
Shopee (sic). When I come to the theater where
Kerala's traditional Kathakali dance is performed each
night, I turn off the main road, walk past the
basilica, and at last reach our hotel.
Next time, Cochin in daylight.
-Josh
=====
Subject: Cochin, pt. II Cochin is one of those places where the whole world
seems to have converged. The same can be said of some
of the world's biggest cities -- New York, London,
Shanghai -- but Cochin is a cultural melange on a
smaller scale, like New Orleans or San Francisco. Like
those cities, it came to prominence as an outpost of
Catholic Europe -- in this case the Portuguese, who
arrived in 1510. Vasco da Gama's tomb can still be
seen in the St. Francis Church, which went from
Portuguese Catholic to "the Calvinist Cult," as the
church's literature puts it, then became Church of
England and is now Church of South India.
What drew the Portuguese, and everyone after them, was
the fantastic harbor. A collossal flood in 1340 carved
out a deep, long bay that merges into a series of
backwaters -- narrow channels and tiny islands that
line the coast for miles. The Portuguese quickly built
a fort on the Cochin peninsula and established a
powerful trading post. In those days it served as a
way station on the route from southern Africa to Java
and the Spice Islands further east. It was a place to
provision the ships, and also to pick up Indian cotton
fabrics to trade with the Indonesians.
As the fortunes of various European powers rose and
fell, Cochin changed hands, but it remained throughout
an important trading center. Eventually spices were
planted in the backwaters and in the Western Ghats --
the mountain range that runs parallel to the coast --
as were rubber, tea and coffee trees. Cochin never
became a commercial hub on a par with Bombay (born Bon
Bahia, or "Good Bay" in Portuguese), Calcutta or
Madras, but the spice trade kept it wealthy, and it
became a cosmopolitan cultural center, which it
remains to this day.
Today, Cochin consists of a few well-heeled
neighborhoods on the old peninsula, while the bulk of
shipping lands at man-made Willingdon Island, and the
real urban center is Ernakulam just across the bay on
the mainland. This arrangement has been very good for
Cochin, which has managed to retain and even enhance
its charm. Portuguese and Dutch buildings with
red-tiled roofs mingle with whimsical modern houses,
and everything is painted in bright colors that fade
marvelously into mottled pastels in the tropical heat
and humidity. Tucked here and there are spacious grass
fields that fill up each Sunday with casual cricket
players; overhanging them are giant trees whose
canopies spread as wide as 200 feet across.
We stayed at Hotel Kapithan, a family guest-house that
faced one of these spacious fields. Our hosts were a
Christian brother and sister -- the brother tended to
wear a lungi, a gold cross, and very little else, and
he proudly told us that he *loves* beef. When we
arrived the sky was clouding over, and by late
afternoon the rumbling thunder fulfilled its promise
and the rain came pouring down onto the coconut palms
and the broad leaves of the banana trees.
For days we lingered in Cochin, charmed by its sleepy
beauty and its thriving cultural life. We started our
days at Kashi, an art cafe run by a woman from
Michigan and her Indian husband. There we would eat
whatever they were serving for breakfast that day --
French toast with honey and fruit, cheese-tomato
omelettes -- and wash it all down with excellent cold
coffee. Here, after all, was a place where you could
trust the ice! We would usually be back for lunch,
too, to linger and listen to the blues or the Edith
Piaf or the Indian fusion on the stereo. Other than
that, well, we just sort of hung around and read and
did work on the Internet, mostly. We were coming
towards the end of our trip, and it was nice to give
up on the slogging for a while.
We did make it down to Mattancherry a couple of times,
the neighborhood with the synagogue and the spice
warehouses and the amazing antique shops. Throughout
India, "antique" and "craft" shops have achieved an
astonishing uniformity: the bronze Shiva dancing in
his ring of fire, the Kashmiri carpets and embroidered
jackets and pashmina shawls and papier mache, the
boring cotton hippie-wear, the wooden Buddha, the
camel-bone boxes, the block-print tapestries.
Sometimes the absurdity of it strikes home, as when we
were in Mamallapuram and I had to go to the Indian
shops to get a lungi in the local style; the shops on
the tourist strip sold only the sort of sarongs you
find from Pokhara to Goa to Cape Cormorin.
Cochin has its share of these standard-issue tourist
traps, and they charge probably the highest prices
anywhere in India. But it also boasts a collection of
genuine antique shops that are simply bursting with
the fascinating flotsam of 500 years of history. For
the right price you can get Hindu tribal masks taller
than you; old 78-rpm record players and the Telugu
classics to spin on them; holy Catholic vestments and
other Catholic toys like chalices and censers;
cornices, archways, lintels and other architectural
details in fabulously carved wood; boxes, boxes,
boxes; roll-top writer's desks; bottles from
long-vanished brands of unguents and potions that
utterly failed to keep the Europeans alive in the
malarial heat; sexy St. Sebastian, scantily clad and
bound to his tree; stacks of photographs of Keralans
frowning earnestly at the camera for their Very
Serious Portraits. Here you might find a Tibetan mask,
there an Indonesian box, around the corner a shelf
full of Chinese Buddhas. You might want to purchase
that old ship's wheel to steer your way through the
mazey backwaters of the larger shops. For you are
sailing through history, possibly even your own
history.
Consider this: Elihu Yale, I just discovered, was not
only the founder of the vaunted university, he was
also president of Madras in the 1690s. And here, more
or less, is how the trade worked in those days: The
Spanish brought over silver from Mexico; the English
and the Dutch (and Portuguese, but less and less)
traded for that silver with spices, molasses, cottons,
silks, indigo, saltpetre and other treasures from the
East; loaded with bullion, the English and Dutch (and
Portuguese) ships headed south, restored themselves at
Table Bay in South Africa, then headed to India and
Indonesia to buy spices, Bengal for fabrics, Gujarat
for Saltpetre; and perhaps they stopped somewhere in
Arabia on the way back, or simply swung back and forth
across the Arabian Sea for a while to engage in what
was known as "the country trade." You might be waylaid
by a pirate from Carolina on the way, or killed by
savages in Madagascar, or die of pretty much any
disease then available; one early English settler at
Bombay suggested that the lifespan of a man there was
three years, but he was contradicted by another who
claimed it to be two monsoons. But if you didn't die,
you could make a fortune. (Bizarrely enough, the
legends about pirates are more or less accurate, right
down to the striped shirts and gold earings and
bandannas.) With all that backing and forthing, Cochin
received visitors who had been just about everywhere
there was to be.
Today, of course, Cochin is about as swashbuckling as
Connecticut. But as in New Orleans and San Francisco,
the legacy of all that cultural mixing remains in the
form of tolerant attitudes, cultural sophistication
and very good food. Cochin boasts some of the finest
boutique hotels and the best restaurants in India. At
the five-star Brunton Boatyard, the chef at the
History Restaurant has created a kind of culinary
archive. The menu contains a lengthy history of the
city, and the actual dishes are a mix of traditional
Keralan, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Portuguese and
British recipes -- pork in pineapple wine sauce,
chilli potatoes, jaggery-sweetened custard -- along
with numerous contemporary fusions. As we ate we were
serenaded by a couple of violinists playing Karnatic
classical music, and the spiced ginger wine with honey
was on the house.
-Josh
=====
[cochin, pt. i]
[cochin, pt. ii]
Date: Sat Mar 1, 2003
"Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun ... In the tropics one must before everything keep calm." - Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
Date: Wed Mar 12, 2003
"Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun ... In the tropics one must before everything keep calm." - Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
