Dance and old synagogue

I was disappointed in the dance, although Tom liked it a lot. It was the simplest of stories –- a king tries to rape the beautiful wife of a demigod, who then conspires with the wife to murder the king. It was performed by 3 actors in meticulously applied face paint and weird colorful costumes. 4 drummers and a singer provided the narrative and the rhythm. The actors mostly conveyed their emotions with facial expressions and intricate hand and finger symbols. Foot action was mostly stomping. It was hard for me to imagine these dancers performing in a temple in the moonlight.

This morning, after a restless night due to the humid heat, I asked for a room with better ventilation and got a much larger room with air for a modest increase in the room rate.

We visited the old synagogue, which is reasonably well preserved. I asked the 35ish-year-old woman collecting entry fees if she was Jewish, and she said that she was. When I asked how many Jews there are in Kochi, she said there are only ten; minyans are achieved with the help of Jewish tourists. I won't be one of them since we depart Friday evening. Very sad. Perhaps she meant just in Fort Kochi, since it’s hard to believe that in a city of 1.2 million there are so few.

We then went to the Dutch Palace that has been turned into a museum with a few artifacts illustrating the history of Ft Kochi as a western enclave and passing thru the hands first of the Portuguese, then Dutch, then British beginning in the 15th century. There have been Jewish traders here since the 16th century.

This afternoon I got an auto rickshaw driver to take me to a liquor store –- a cage-like affair where the store staff takes orders and hands out beer and distilled spirits through heavy wire mesh. Most restaurants don’t serve any liquor because of the prohibitively expensive liquor license that is required. However, we went to dinner at a fish restaurant on the waterfront where we were served beer on the sly in teacups. Reminded me of movies about life during prohibition days.

The restaurant overlooked a ferry terminal where ferryboats came every few minutes to carry passengers and vehicles to the island across the sea channel, maybe 1/2 mile away. Very active – boats come and go every 10-15 minutes until about 9 pm. In the background, we could see fishing boats and large tanker vessels sliding silently into the nearby harbor.

Before dinner, we walked along the waterfront where fishermen were selling the day’s catch. During our meal, the proprietor (whom we had met the previous day when he had beckoned us to come in and admire his restaurant – pretty scroungey actually) said he had noticed us passing by the place where he was buying the fish that we were ordering for our dinner. Can’t get much fresher than that!