we got into kochi round six thirty in the morning, and caught an auto to fort kochi. and once at our ‘homely homestay’ we collapsed for a few hours there on the bed... after which we showered and newly spic and span we went out for breakfast at the kashi art cafe just nearby. where we sipped our filter coffee and nibbled on our banana cake and leafed thru the newspaper, all quite reviving and reorienting after the nightmare of the night. the place was beautifully designed/landscaped, sprawling, everything perfectly placed for a cunning picturesque type of effect, all these little nooks and cozy crannies hidden away around corners. a gallery space leading in to a series of rooms n courtyards where people overwhelmingly foreign sat at tables, benches, all much like us sipping and nibbling and idling away the morning.
then what? a wander around the various churches, the residential areas, and finally over to jewtown. there was santa cruz basilica, striking white and grand, inside on the wall and ceiling paintings from back in the day by some painter brought over from europe. there was also st. francis church where vasco da gama had been buried before the body was shifted elsewhere. but that visit was for only a moment, it was simple, almost nothing there sides a few old tombstones. after the beauty and richness of santa cruz basilica, it was really nothing.
then there was the indo-portuguese museum, a well-kept and really interesting (for real!) collection of relics of kochi’s colonial history, including wood figurines of various holy folk, paintings on panels, tabernacles, glittering monstrances, more... we were given a personal tour by the over-eager ticket seller who (we knew there had to be a catch!) took us into the gift store and guilted us into buying some random perfume...
then off we went down the road to jewtown, meaning to see the synagogue there that turned out to be closed. it was still a scenic old way, all these trade houses, ware houses, some dilapadated more and some less, some in ruins and some in use. we stopped at some french place called caza maria to sip on fresh lime sodas, it was a beautiful place the walls in a rich royal blue and accents of various kinds, paintings, trompe-l’oeil painted on over the blue, and candelabras.
and then, the grand culmination to a day that was quick wearing me out, the obligatory tourist-y attendance at one of the all too numerous kathakali shows crowding fort kochi. schmabil made me do it. cuz really, kathakali bores me to death. we got there in time to see a full hour of the actor-dancers doing their makeup, elaborate and bold, all this color alone probably the reason why the kathakali is the face of kerala tourism. kathakali is meant to be some seven hours long, each performance, but even this shortened one hour version left my brain screaming. cuz kathakali is on the opposite end of the spectrum from (my beloved, beautiful, forever fascinating) kathak; in kathakali the actor-dancer spends ten times the amount of time and does twenty times more complicated movements than necessary to communicate his message—in fact, i think he spends so much time per word, per phrase, that for me the greater meaning is lost in a burst of impatience, on my side. compared to kathak, which is so human, natural, easily comprehensible to even the completely uninitiated, kathakali is just needlessly confusing repetitive drawn out and obscure. not to mention the creepy painful-looking and excessive facial expressions/eye movements, stylized and extreme. i can admire the effort, the training, the specificity but i just cannot appreciate the product for any other reason, it doesn’t do anything for me. tho schmabil loved it. so i guess maybe for some folks, different strokes.
after that tho i was really completely done for the night. after some random bad dinner at some random junky hotel we got home... and the next morning, after a pleasant breakfast at a place called old courtyard, surprisingly enough located in a vast old courtyard with tables set out around its edges and a scattering of potted plants, we gathered ourselves and our big red suitcase together and set off for allepey and the backwaters.
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