The Many Moods of Fort Cochin

In an age of e-mail and Facebook, I hadn’t stepped into a post office in years, but here I was at a PO in a small town buying a postcard. This one’s for me, so I write my own address on it and hand it back to the clerk. She smiles and stamps it—with a Star of David. I’m in Israel, right?

No, the stamp reads “682002”—a Kerala pincode. It’s Fort Cochin, just a short drive from the traffic snarls of Ernakulam, the state’s business capital. Yet this quaint place, where you hardly feel the hours slip by, has a lotus-eater’s lassitude.

Fort Cochin is still filled with untouched secrets. You find narrow lanes redolent with the scents of herbs, oils and spices—there’s even the world’s oldest pepper exchange (upstaged by the national commodity exchanges, it does little business today, so you can walk in and talk to anybody during business hours); antique shops piled high with bargains; treasures within the old Paradesi Synagogue, art galleries and churches; freshly caught fish cooked to order in the little stalls along the marina; backwater boat rides. It’s a small place, but you can’t fit its many facets into a single day. [Its Malayalam name “Kochi” is now official, although many people the world over still say “Cochin.”]

Fort Cochin must be explored on foot, and slowly, to study its side streets and alleyways. This way I discover its old-world shops, cafés, stately bungalows and heritage structures, like the Dutch Palace with its fine elements of colonial and Kerala architecture.

It’s so called only because the Dutch undertook major repairs on it around 1665 AD. It passed from the Portuguese to the Raja of Cochin “to pacify and compensate him” for a temple that was plundered. Generations of Cochin rajas have had their coronations here, but this landmark had begun to deteriorate.

Monolita Chatterjee, an architect with the firm restoring the palace to its former glories, showed me around. The gleaming old wood floors stand revealed after layers of cement and plaster were stripped. Its walls glow once again with ancient murals. “We need to preserve what’s left without altering the structure, and showcase its original grandeur,” she explains, as we walk through the Queen’s Chambers, dominated by a huge painting depicting Krishna’s amorous exploits in vivid detail—one of the palace’s many mythological frescoes. It also houses heirlooms and royal portraits donated by Cochin’s royals. “When we finish, this will be a museum of local history,” says Chatterjee.

The Jew Town quarter is Fort Cochin’s star attraction. Kerala’s Jewish diaspora, legend has it, began arriving even before King Solomon’s day for trade in spices, ivory and wood. They have claimed proud descent from the lost tribes of Israel, but the Fort Cochin* settlement dates from the early 11th century when Bhaskara Ravivarman II, the Chera raja, granted Jews—already living in northern Kerala—sanctuary from Muslim persecutors and rivals in the spice trade.

It’s not clear how the Paradesi Synagogue got its name. Most people will tell you that it’s because Jews were seen as foreigners or paradesi. But, you could argue, parades also means Paradise in Hebrew. At this synagogue, built in 1568 by descendants of European Jews, traditions are clearly stated: “Please dress modestly” and “visitors wearing shorts, short skirts or sleeveless tops will not be permitted...” Luckily, I pass the dress code. I pause to chat to the young lady issuing passes—she looks remarkably like a Jewish girl I once knew during my schooldays in Kerala. Yes, she’s my schoolmate’s cousin—it’s a tiny