Kochin (Cochin)

 

Drenched with colour, saturated with history, the fascinating Queen of the Arabian Sea looks over a natural harbour along Kerala’s 500 kilometre long Malabar Coast. The crumbling capital of an extinct Portuguese empire, Kochi reigned supreme over the spice commerce for centuries, whilst people of every race and creed landed in its port.

To this day, the narrow alleyways of Jewtown, Kochi’s ancient Jewish quarter, where the air is filled with the ineffably exotic scent of coffee and spices, echo with the voices of brokers trading at the Pepper Exchange. A few steps away, in the XV century palace of Mattancherry, some of the finest examples of murals in South India can be found . This is a place where Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam have long peacefully coexisted; as well as being home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Asia, Kochi is also the site of the first European-built church in India.

In this millennia-old town, everything seems to testify to its cosmopolitan past; at the harbour’s mouth, fishermen still operate the famous Chinese Fishing Nets that were brought here over seven centuries ago by the emissaries of the court of Kublai Khan. All around, in the old city of Fort Kochi, the colonial architecture recalls a time in which first the Dutch, and then the British, took possession of this treasured land.

Yet the daily performances of Kathakali, a form of sacred dance drama which originated in Kerala from the ritual tribal dance of Theyyam, are a powerful reminder that throughout the centuries the local traditions have continued to thrive. In Kochi, the interweaving of history, cultures and religions forms an unforgettable mosaic