I married a Malayalee. And that means I get to travel to God's own country multiple times a year. Now, now, for those of you who are beginning to imagine me staring into a deep golden sunset from the sundeck of the family-owned kettuvellam, stop! Cochin maybe India's tourist haven, but for me it is my in-laws place. Every Malayalee goes to their nAdu (hometown) at least once a year - for Onam, or Christmas or both. For us, a trip to Cochin is about lazing at home, and making the mandatory trip to meet every single relative in a 100-km radius. *Yawn* Here's my take on Cochin, kettuvellams and Kerala from the vantage point of a tourist turned daughter-in-law.
My husband's family home is next door to a church. That is probably because Kerala has many hundreds of them and everyone lives next to a church. If you are flying into Cochin airport (what a charming little international airport this one!), look out of the window and marvel at the swaying coconut palms and the white spires of churches towering in competition to the coconuts. Coconuts, coconut milk, coconut oil, and anything coconut - yes, the hype is not hype. Malayalees eat coconut in grated/ curried/ chopped form in every dish. (Coconut gets close competition from curry leaves for the title of most gratuitous ingredient in Kerala cuisine) And also use coconut oil for cooking. I am used to it now, and I think it is truly delicious! So much so that I like flavoring my toast with a dot of coconut oil and eating that with pineapple jam. Talk about a virgin pina colada for breakfast!
Bananas. Endless colorful, pink, red, yellow, green tall and short bananas. And the Ethakayappam or Pazham Pori at the India Coffee house in Changancherry is the best that I have ever had. Cochin Bakery in Gandhi Nagar has some yummy Unniappam - dark brown puffy crispy outsides and webby soft insides, with a complex sweetness only jaggery can give, with the occasional elaichi seed and coconut wedge *sigh*. This has definitely got to be God's own food. And all this I would not know if it wasn't for the wonderful Malayalee I married.
The one I married is wonderful, but most Malayalee men, seem to take their right to stare at women a little too seriously. I have not faced any serious harassment perhaps because the wise one is always by my side, wherever I venture. He knows better than to leave me alone in his city.
The drive to Changanachery from Cochin goes through some typically pretty Kerala scenery. There are vast expanses of green rice fields, flocks of ducks, winding waterways with kettuvellams floating by, and signboards with pictures of pearl spot and many other big fish next to roadside stalls with heaps of big fish. Nature is ridiculously generous in this sliver of land. If I were a tourist, I would be clicking away. As a daughter-in-law I look, and move on. It is ironic, but it is how it is.
As a young visitor (my family and I drove all around Cochin and Alleppey in a car and then a houseboat) I marveled at the richness of the land, the grace of the snake boats and the gliding backwater birds, the fresh and healthy red rice and the coconut-crazy cuisine, the ubiquitous bakeries and their surprisingly good products, the lush brush mustache of the Malayalee man in his tied up mundu, and all the proud history of the land.
After I married my Malayalee man, in a true local's style, I have not visited the Jewish synagogue, or the Matancherry palace or dined on fresh catch cooked up in a roadside stall in Fort Kochi, or roamed its spice markets, or even stepped into a boat, leave alone a houseboat. But there is another side to Kerala that I am learning about - of how every Malayalee home has wonderful produce growing in even the tiniest of backyards, of how black Syrian-style beef is blackened, of how biryani can me made with kappa and meat bones, of how the tea-stall owner in the next lane traveled to 18 countries while selling tea for 5 rupees a cup, of how tasty coconuts really are. And sadly, of how every home has shelves loaded with pictures of various children and grandchildren in different stages of growth, all living in the 'greener' pastures of ANZ and USA, leaving behind this gold mine, this lush, gorgeous and generous land beneath their feet.
