Greetings from Kochi, Kerala, India

Greetings from Kochi, Kerala, India, where Iowa Guru along with our two offspring are vacationing. I think that I’ll share some initial thoughts about observations from our first 24 hours in Kerala:

1.    The roads that we’ve been on have been reasonably good, although it’s been a small sample so far.

2.    The roads have some litter, but so far, I’ve not seen any real collections of garbage that I see in Jaipur. Does this inidicate better municipal services? A greater sense of civic pride?

3.    I’ve noticed much less horn-honking and general traffic chaos.

4.    I’ve not seen any human or animal-powered vehicles on the roads, whereas this phenomena commonly occurs in Jaipur.

5.    The language (Mayorayum) and script here are quite different from the Hindi of the north. The script is more like a Thai script or other south Asian scripts that I’ve seen.

6.    The English here seems quite good, and that’s consistent from what I was told by friends in Jaipur. English is, it seems, the common language. I’ve heard that the people here in the south aren’t so keen on the use of Hindi.

7.    Our taxi into town had a rosary wrapped around the mirror and a figure of the Maddona and Child figurine on the dashboard. In addition, we’ve seen a couple of churches, a drawing of the Jesus & the Sacred Heart in the lobby, and a tuk-tub with “Christ” written about the windshield. It seems that Christians are the most significant minority here instead of Muslims.

8.    In reviewing local history, I see that the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British all were here and left traces. I’d guess that the Portuguese left the Catholicism.

9.    The weather here is hot & muggy. A short walk this morning left IG and I very sweaty, a far cry from current Jaipur weather. As Jaipur shares 27 degrees latitude with Miami and south Texas, I’d guess that we’re more on par with Cuba or an even lower latitude Carribean island. (Sorry, no Internet as a I write this; check it yourself.)

10.  A lot of the food here has a coconut base that my doctor warned me about (quite mistakenly, I think; he’s not up on his Taubes & Sisson), but in any event, it’s quite tasty. Also, since we’re on the Malabar coast, we have access to fresh fish (not so much in semi-arid Rajasthan).

11. Men wear skirts here. I can’ remember what they are called, but I’m not going there. I’m all for dressing native as appropriate, but there are limits.

12. The electricity goes off in the hotel here at random times but comes on again in a few seconds. For several reasons we didn’t venture out much today, so I don’t know if this happens across a grid or it is particular to our hotel.

13. Kerala in the late 1950’s had the first (so they say) popularly elected Communist government. I suppose because of constitutional restraints and the restraints of real elections, they didn’t cause harm here; in fact, they may have done some real good. The literacy rate here is the highest in India, where literacy and poverty levels remain discouragingly high. I don’t know the story of how all of this occurred here, but on the whole, compared to what I’ve seen in Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi, things look pretty good here. (I owe a separate post on Delhi, which is, I think, sui generis among Indian cities, much like Washington D.C. among American cities.)

This concludes my report on the first 24 hours of observations of Kochi and Kerala. Some touring is on tap for tomorrow, so I should learn more and share.

Namaste.