Opinion Kochis high tide
Taking stock of new connects in an old trading hub from cricket to commerce.
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Kochi happened freakishly. Early weeks of June always brought rains to Kerala,but in 1341,it was end-of-the-world,biblical downpour. Thunderous rains over the eastern mountains swelled rivers whose fury respected no shore. The Vembanad backwater,fed by surging waters from everywhere,kept rising menacingly. Over the Arabian Sea,the monsoon outbreak was unusually ferocious. Caught between the gnarling sea and the deluged land was the Kochi sandbar. Soon it gave way to excessive attention from conspiring natural forces on both sides. From this rupture rose the port of Kochi.
What Will Cuppy wrote about Egypt in that delightful satire,The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody when the Nile floods receded,the land,as far as the eye can see,is covered by Egyptologists could well be true about Kochi. Low tide in the Arabian Sea does not throw up hundreds of historians of Kochi,yet every Kochinite has more than one tale. The best I heard is how a chronicler of Kochi saw Salman Rushdie lurking in a cinnamon-scented alley in Mattancherry and collecting material for The Moors Last Sigh. This was after the fatwa, he informed me.
There is a certain lightness about the Kochinite that has probably come from centuries of dealing with modern cultures. Also,they dont seem to be taking themselves seriously; nor do they seem to take others seriously. Kochi is home to mimicry in Kerala,the most flourishing performing art of the state. Kochinites innate sense of humour makes him less bonded to manipulated opinion and manufactured consent,something to which their Malayali brethren elsewhere are easily prone to. One place where mimicking did not happen for a long time was the northern side of the harbour gorge.
Like all Gemini-born,Kochi is also two-faced. Its southern side received visitors from Rome and China,and the Kochi chronicler never fails to tell you that it has been home to Jewish residents for more than two millennia. The successive flush of European imperialists the Portuguese,the Dutch and,lastly,the English nurtured the southern part of Kochi. For the Portuguese and the Dutch,Kochi was an important dot on the trade lines that touched many ports on the map from Hormuz to Malacca.
Another event,the opening of the Suez Canal,fortuitously quickened Kochis development,with many ships choosing to sail by the western route. The British planned a modern harbour in 1920,and to build it,they got Sir Robert Bristow,an engineer with extensive experience in the maintenance of the Suez Canal.
All this while,Kochis northern twin,a collection of disjointed islands,remained neglected. Except for the white facades of Iberian-style churches occasionally breaking the skyline,nothing much seemed to be happening there. Again,the proximity to international maritime route,about 7 km away from the harbour,has brought opportunities to Kochi. The recent opening of Vallarpadam International Container Terminal by the prime minister is as much a landmark event as the opening of the Cochin Port on the southern side in 1940.
Also on the northern side,an LPG terminal has come up for importing huge quantities of liquified gas. This could be the trigger for a whole lot of downstream industries in Kerala and neighbouring states. Kochi is also the landing point for two major undersea cables carrying international Internet and telephone traffic. To take advantage of this,the Kerala government is starting a much-awaited IT park,called the Smart City.
All of a sudden so much is happening in Kochi. It is now a port of call for the Volvo Ocean Race,which to yachting is like F1 to motor racing (the Ocean racers dont say that; they say it is the Everest of sailing). Artists were always drawn to Kochi. Amrita Sher-Gil spent weeks sketching murals in the Mattancherry Palace. At Kayikkas,Kochis famous biryani place,near the sooty switchboard,you can find an old sketch presented by a satisfied M.F. Husain. Many of the spice godowns in Fort Kochi have now been turned into art galleries. Now,Riyas Komu and Bose Krishnamachari have announced their plans for an art biennale.
To this I am not adding cricket. With the formation of the IPL team,Kochi caught the imagination of many,who had never heard of it. Strung together by a motley group of cricketing buccaneers,with unclear money trails behind them,the team now carries a highly portable name of Indi Commandos,and a logo plagiarised from Mortein insect repellent. Kochinites are hardly likely to hitch their wagon to something as dubious as this.
A chronicler of Kochi recently pointed to the LPG terminal at the harbour mouth and said,In Sydney they built an opera house there. She always thinks big. Abandoned Ernakulam Terminus should be made into an art gallery like Musee dOrsay in Paris. On the flip side,its filmmakers have blown up Kochis underworld to Mumbai-like proportions.
Back in the 1960s,starved for industries,Kochinites demanded a shipbuilding yard from Indira Gandhi. The government of India bargained hard for the land and got half of a promenade in the middle of the town. Now with tall boundaries all around,the face of the city is hidden under an iron veil. Kochinites need urban space. Opening up of the northern part of Kochi is an opportunity to give them that space one of the most urbane people in the country,like the Mumbaikars.
Madhavan,a Malayalam writer,is an IAS officer
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