Last Day in Fort Cochin

The next morning was Claire’s and my “free day” in Cochin. We had breakfast, getting to know one of the novitiates as we ate, and then had help from him getting a “top up” on Claire’s phone minutes. He also gave us a quick lesson reading the first two letters in “Fort Cochin” in Malayalam so we could spot our bus. A crowd of women were getting on the front, so we walked to the rear door, not knowing there was a difference, and found ourselves in the back surrounded by men. But a grandfatherly gentleman offered us his seat in the back corner and then talked to us the rest of the way in Hindi (figuring, I suppose, that if Malayalam would not work, perhaps Hindi would), proudly trying to get the shy boys we took to be his grandchildren to greet us in some common language. Very sweet.


Our first mission was a brewed cup of coffee to make up for many days of Nescafe. We found a little organic café called Solar, where Neal Young was singing “Harvest Moon,” and the menu featured what I had been loudly craving for several days, French toast. I had had such success craving tomato soup already, and eggs—they had both appeared on the menu at Father Nelson’s cousin’s house. And cold water, which we found at the train station. So I believed I needn’t settle for calling the white bread, butter, and jam at the pastoral center a good 2/3 of a French toast. At the Solar Café we had the real thing, and French press coffee, and fresh pineapple and watermelon juice. And Neal Young. And funk. A western hippy’s dream.






Continuing to indulge our occidental cravings, we stopped by the internet café for awhile, then shopped and walked around till it was time for lunch. We loved the signs indicating that particular attractions were “0 Km” away and the ubiquitous orders on walls to “stick no bills.” Every way we turned, we always seemed to end up at St. Francis Church, so we went in again, and taking a closer look learned that Queen Victoria was (at least according to the British) Empress of India. We then went on an impromptu church tour, visiting the Santa Cruz Basilica Church and the pretty blue and white Syrian Church of St. Peter and St. Paul.













Again I had picked something out of the guidebook for lunch and we did well again: an overpriced but pretty hotel with a bayside café where we ate fish and chips and watched fishermen in a small boat throw out their nets, let them trail, and pull them in as the boat drifted sideways downstream, and then paddle upstream again to start all over.

We too drifted along, though less purposefully than the fishers, taking pictures of the gardens, strolling around the so-called “ultra modern tourist complex” (see picture), and then making our way past the Chinese fishing nets to discover that what the tourist map called a “sea wall” was actually a walkway that curved along the shore, tracing the fleshy part of the thumb that is Fort Cochin. Every hundred feet or so was a trashcan shaped like an elephant or a rabbit, bearing a sign that said “use me.” It wasn’t just a tourist haunt. Real people, people who looked like they belonged in Cochin, strolled with their families in the afternoon breeze, buying ice cream and watching the Arabian waves. Evangelism was happening there. Several lengthy Muslim treatises on the secondary place of women had been painted on the old bastion walls. Someone else had painted “JESUS SECOND COMING SOON” (BIBLE). Evidently a third person imagined a more interfaith option, showing Jesus and Vishnu back to back with a mosque over their heads. An “Om” graced with a cross and a crescent moon completed the montage.

At the end of the sea wall was a small beach, and beyond it yet another inviting tourist hotel. This one had couches under umbrellas (or at least, the permanently affixed umbrellas were somewhat nearby the couches, shading something in the vicinity), overlooking the sea, being enjoyed by the kind of people who sit still for afternoon tea. So we took our couch and lazily drank overpriced drinks, with me daydreaming aloud to Claire about her and Sajal enjoying their honeymoon in Cochin, and Claire daydreaming about opening a bed and breakfast of her own in Pokhara someday. That was enough eating and drinking for the day, and soon we found a rickshaw to take us home.

That night we said fond goodbye to Sister Elizabeth, and in the morning to our other friends, the old woman who pinched Claire’s cheek and asked with indistinguishable speech but clear gestures about grandchildren, the novitiate who had taught us to read the “Fo” in “Fort Cochin,” and the others, and rode to the train station to depart for Father Nelson’s parents’ home in Coimbatore, which is pronounced, as far as I could tell, “CoAMador.”