Green Kerala: Fort Kochi*

The story of Fort Kochi is the story of the foreigners who have settled there at some point or another. The name Cochin actually means “like China”, and comes from Chinese traders from the court of Kublai Khan who settled in the area in the 14^th century¹.





The foreigners came because of the spices². Kochi was the centre of Indian spice trade for many centuries; Kerala has some of the most important spice and tea plantations in India and Cochin is still a major trading post for them. As you walk past the different warehouses in the market you see people unloading sacs of all possible spices; you can smell the peppers, cardamom, anise seed, cumin, and cinnamon in the air. And if you get close enough you can also smell the tea leaves packed and ready to be shipped. There is so much happening all around it is difficult to walk and take it all at once, the emaciated people carrying heavy loads on their heads, the covered women buying groceries, the dilapidated buildings from colonial times, the heat. It’s easy to imagine this place two or three hundred years ago. As in many other situations V.S. Naipaul’s words ring true: India exists in a multiplicity of time periods at once. Behind the old warehouses and the traditional coolies you can see the modern port, full of ships and containers ready to be sent off around the world.

Next to the spice market there is the Jewish quarter that was founded by the so-called Malabar Jews. According to tradition the oldest community was founded in Cranganore in the year 70 AD after the destruction of the Temple of Jersualem by the Romans and the resulting diaspora. They controlled a major portion of the world spice trade until the 16^th century, when neighboring princes took advantage of internal divisions in the community and attacked them. The Jews fled to nearby Cochin (legend has it that the Rabbi escaped swimming with his wife on his back), where the Rajah welcomed them and gave them land. Today there are very few Jews left in Cochin (they actually need outsiders to have enough people for a minyan), since most of them went to Israel after 1948³ or converted to Christianity. For this reason the Pardasi Synagogue (from 1568) and the neighborhood around it is now mostly full of antiques shops for tourists and bookstores (where I obviously bought more books).

Across town from the synagogue is the Church of Saint Francis (originally St. Anthony’s) built in 1503 by the Portuguese. It is the first Roman Catholic Church in India⁴ founded by the Franciscan monks who arrived with the Vasco de Gama expedition⁵. He died in Fort Kochi in 1524 on his third voyage to India and was buried in this church for fifteen years until his remains were taken back to Portugal to the Mosterio dos Jerónimos (built to commemorate his success in securing a trade route from India to Portugal around Africa). Fort Kochi was the first European colonial settlement in India. It remained the capital of Portuguese India until 1530, when they opted for Goa as their capital.

Also in the search for spices, the Dutch arrived in 1683 and destroyed many of the Portuguese buildings, particularly the churches (although even today Cochin has one of the largest Christian populations in India and there's a church in every corner). The Dutch stayed in Kochi until 1795 when they were defeated by the English. It was only in 1947 with Independence that Cochin ceased to be under foreign control. No wonder it was the first princely state to willingly join the Indian Union…

Today foreigners keep shaping the history of the town. Fort Cochin is still a main trade post and an important tourist destination as the gateway to the famous Kerala backwaters. It is very enjoyable for its calm pace, lush vegetation and delicious food.

*Two weekends ago we went to Kerala to celebrate 3 birthdays: mine, Olga's and Dany's. We spent one day in Fort Kochin and 2 days on a houseboat in the backwaters. Kerala is one of the most beautiful places I've been to. This is the first post on this trip.

¹All that remains of them are the Chinese fishing nets that are still used by the local fisherman. They are very large nets that hang from wooden structures and are lowered when the tide comes in.

²f you remember from primary school one of the reasons for the discovery of the New World was the search for a new route to India to get spices (the Turks had closed the route through the Middle East). From the confusion that America was in fact India comes the use of the word indians to describe the indigenous people of that continent.

³ A very good movie that deals with Indian Jews' migration to Israel is Au bout du monde à gauche (2004). Very recommendable.

⁴The church founded by Saint Thomas is known as Syrian Church of India. As with the Jews, the Portuguese also persecuted them since they wanted them to be part of the Roman Church!

⁵I’m always impressed at the Franciscan monks who would travel with the explorers and just get off on unknown lands and found churches. In Mexico with Hernan Cortes arrived 12 Franciscan Monks who started converting and baptizing the Indians. Can you imagine arriving at a place like Tenochtitlan and start telling people that their gods (who like human sacrifices) are wrong? That takes courage and a bit of madness I think.

Had I Been Born in India...

This weekend in Cochin I bought even more books on India (I know what you must think: when am I going to read all of this? The answer is: someday, someday). One of them is a book on women in India by an American journalist called May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons. Even though it is a bit old (1990) and not terribly academic it is a very interesting read (and it helps me become conscious of many of my prejudices and judgments when I read them from someone else).

One of the chapters is on female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. The author interviews couples who have done these practices in a rural district in Tamil Nadu and in Bombay. Some of the families were very poor and decided to kill their newborn daughter because she was the second or third girl and would not be able to afford her dowry and she would lead a miserable life, so better to spare her. In most cases they would poison her with a local plant. In Bombay, people of a higher socioeconomic level would get a test to know the sex of the baby, and in many cases would have an abortion if it was a girl. The reason why the rural women would not get abortions is not that they could not get one, but that it would require them to be on leave from work for a month, and they cannot afford losing that income.

As shocking as these practices are, they're not really that uncommon. They also happen in China and many other countries where girls are seen as a liability, not as an asset. In India it actually makes economic sense not to invest in girls, since they will leave their parents house to live with their in-laws. She will only take up resources and her parents will have to pay to get her to marry. In other cultures, even if women are seen as second to men, daughters take care of their parents in old age so it makes sense to have them around; to the extreme that in Spain (and thus in Mexico) the youngest daughter was not supposed to marry and would stay home to take care of her parents (becoming el báculo de la vejez)*.

What really impressed me is that the stories of these women are from 1985 or 1990, not from a century ago. If I had been born in any other country or situation, I might not be here writing this. As the fourth girl in my family I would have been considered a terrible curse. My mother would have been looked down on for her incapacity to have boys. If my parents had chosen to keep me, they might have become indebted their whole lives to pay for my dowry, and even then I’d have probably married with difficulties and would have lived as a quasi slave with the risk of my in-laws torturing me (throwing acid or burning me) because I did not bring enough money into the marriage. Dire prospects on all counts.

So even if women face many problems in Mexico, and machismo is still rampant; I do not believe even girls in the poorest households face these dangers. In my case (as exceptional as it might be), my family welcomed me when I was born and were joyous at the event even if my parents would have probably liked a boy after three girls (they did get 2 after me). I was well-fed and educated, raised to believe in myself, free to work, free to marry who I choose, and around long enough to be in India comparing my situation to others who were not so lucky.

*as is portrayed in Como agua para chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Just some photos: Osmania University

The last Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan founded Osmania University in 1918. It is the seventh oldest establishment of higher studies in India and housed in a beautiful, though unkempt, building.

Don´t Spread Foolishness: Sampoorna Surya Grahanam

Tomorrow there will be a total solar eclipse (sampoorna surya grahanam) that will be visible in Northern India and neighboring Countries. This will be the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century. In Hyderabad, because we're too far south it will only be a partial eclipse (70%-80%) that will take place at sunrise. Can you imagine? A rising sun partially covered by the moon? I'm sure it will be amazing.

But now I'm worried. It all started when my friend Angela's landlord told her not to move in tomorrow because it would be highly inauspicious; so we started discussing whether she should or not since she is already paying rent for the apartment (we finally concluded she shouldn't, if not for luck, for cultural sensitivity -I mean, who wants their landlord to think they're a bad omen?).

So I did a little research and it turns out that whether the eclipse is good or bad has been one of the most brainstorming questions of the year for astrologers, because there will be 3 eclipses in a 30 day period (lunar eclipse on July 6, solar eclipse on July 22, and lunar eclipse on August 6). During previous occasions when there were three eclipses major wars happened. First was the Kurukshetra war in the Mahabharata and also the World Wars took place after three consecutive grahams (!). Because of this most astrologers have indicated that this eclipse is a very bad omen that will be related to wars and violence, as well as to natural disasters related to water.

Since it is considered to be very inauspicious by all astrologers, people should not undertake any new projects on this day, eat anything prepared on this day and put a blade of grass on water or food to protect it. People are taking this very seriously. What is most interesting is that the measures taken regarding the eclipse have been the same for centuries; what science has brought is only the ability to predict when such events will happen, but no changes on how they are perceived.

This reminded me of one of my favorite books when I was growing up: "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" by Mark Twain. It is a very fun book. When Hank Morgan is about to be burned at the stake (by none other than Merlin), he remembers that on that day in 528 AD there will be a solar eclipse and by "predicting" it he saves his neck... His science gives him power over the superstitious medieval English. Science and having the ability to predict natural phenomena has changed men's perception of himself and empowered him over nature (at least in his mind). Big contrast with the situation here. Take a look at this comments from the astrological blog about the eclipse:

Anonymous said...

Please folks, there is enough evidence to prove that there is no :harmful: effect of solar eclipse of pregnant women or even normal people. This is a myth, a superstition - and please keep it at that. There is no harm in partially blocking a source of light, any "harmful" rays would be blocked too ... such as UV etc.. and NO effect on an person, except AVOID looking directly at the sun - it is so bright, it can damage your eyes (eclipse or no eclipse - all the time). thanks

January 26, 2009 8:14 AM

Anonymous said...

Hey Anony.. are you a Christian to just tarnish Hinduism.. you are at the wrong place. SURYAGRAHAN DOES EFFECT FOR PREGNANT WOMEN AND NORMAL PEOPLE TOO.. DONT SPREAD FOOLISHENSS IT IS A MYTH.. YOU ARE A MYTH..

January 26, 2009 9:53 AM

I just love how rational-anonymous must have some hidden religious agenda to make the statements he/she makes...

But even if being scared of an eclipse is foolishness given what we know about this astronomical event, I still I worry given the recent happenings in my life. Apparently the effect of the eclipse is different according to zodiac sign. It turns out that the Surya Grahan is "unfavorable and bad (extremely negative according to another website) for the natives of Mesh (Aries), Karkataka (Cancer), Simha (Leo) and Dhanu (Sagittarius) rasis or zodiac signs". I'm Cancer!

I don't want to take any chances... Maybe I should just be a fool and stay home. A happy and safe fool.

Mamma Mia! Sono sul giornale!

It turns out I was on the news in Hyderabad!

There was a huge traffic jam (almost as bad as that morning in 2006 when we woke up to find El Peje had taken Reforma), so I wanted to see what was going on. As always I had my camera at hand, since there are so many interesting things going on in the street on every auto ride I can't help but want to take pictures of them (most of them don't turn out so good... sadly).

The reason for the mess was that a Minister was going to pass and they closed some roads for him. (For a more detailed account on who he is and local Andhra Pradesh politics, see: http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/17/stories/2009071759160300.htm). As you can see I'm very perplexed about the situation...


And going through my pictures, I found him looking at me looking at him. Can you find him??


And just to have a quick poll: If you saw me on the street what country would you say I'm from? Please leave a comment!

On the Dignifying Saree

When you arrive in India you can't help but notice the women wearing colorful sarees. Rich, poor, in cars, rickshaws, beggars, street sweepers, with jewellry, without; everybody wears it. Cotton, silk, muselin, embroidered, stamped, with brocade, light, heavy... the possibilities are infinite.

The saree (or sari) is a strip of unstitched fabric, from four to nine metres in length that is draped over the body in various styles. The most common style is for the sari to be wrapped around the waist, with one end then draped over the shoulder. The sari is usually worn over a petticoat with a cropped blouse known as a choli forming the upper garment. Women can start wearing half sarees (less meters of fabric) when they reach puberty and then when they reach 20 or 22 years or get married, they start using the full saree.

It has been in use since the Indus Valley Civilization (2800-1800 BC) and is thought to have evolved from the dhoti (the oldest Indian draped garment, today only worn by men). There is some discussion on how the petticoat and choli came to be. Many believe they were introduced by the British; since before them women wore the saree with nothing underneath, somewhat exposing their breasts, which would be completely against Victorian morality. But others say they were introduced earlier by Christian missionaries (morality again)... Who knows, what is true is that today almost everybody wears a petticoat and a choli, except in some very rural areas. After independence, the saree became a national symbol, since it was seen as something that could be worn by all women regardless of religion: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or Parsi.

What comes to my mind each time I see a woman in a saree is how dignified she looks. No matter what her body type, the saree is very flattering and makes most women look elegant, regardless of their socioeconomic condition or activity. I find it a stark contrast to western clothing, where lycra or other such body-hugging fabrics can have undesirable revelatory effects (the so called "efecto guerrerense*"). And they are extremely comfortable! (once it's in place, putting it on is very complicated).

Lately the saree has been losing ground to the salwar kameez (pant and long shirt combo) and western colthing. But I think it will be around for a long time still. I really like the fact that it has been around for so long and that women still use it, not as a relic from the past, but as a living part of their lives. On the downside, it is true that trying to do housework in a sari must be no easy task, and the fact that it has remained, even though it seriously limits women's range of movements (no running, or taking large steps, you have to ride sideways on a motorcycle, it doesn't have pockets), may well be due to the fact that women's lifestyles have not changed that much either...

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs: Must women empowerment and liberation come at the cost of efecto guerrerense?


*When a woman wears a tight t-shirt that unintendedly creeps up and shows her belly or lonjas.

The curse of the Indian mangoes

I have payed dearly for my cheekiness. The mango gods have struck me down for my blasphemies and put me in my place. Pretending Mexican mangoes were better than Indian ones. What nerve!

This weekend I went to Kumbakonam for an Indian wedding (to be recounted shortly). The wedding was great, but I had a lot of misadventures coming back to Hyderabad. On Sunday I got very sick, but I decided to still take the train to Chennai in order not to miss my flight back to Hyderabad on Monday morning (enough plane stories for a summer, or so I thought).

After a miserable train ride, feeling terribly ill, we got to Chennai at 5 am. I was half asleep and in a lot of pain, I couldn't walk for fear of having to run to the bathroom at any second. After taking a shower at Olga's house, I called a taxi to get to the airport; the taxi didn't show up, so I ended up taking an auto (by now I'm cutting it really close to my flight and autos go at 30 kmh, max). On the way to the airport the auto driver stops for gas and asks me for a fare advance. I look for my wallet and... it's missing. It probably fell out after I took it out in the train station in my dreamy-sick haze to pay something. Woe is me. I had money and, more importantly, my debit and credit card I've been using to get money while here. And I also really liked that wallet. Double woe.

I freaked out but I pushed on to get to the airport. I would figure a way to pay the driver. But I got to the airport at 8 am and my plane left at 8:20 am. There was no way I'd get on the plane. So I turned back to Olga's house (poor Olga is paying some past life dues: she is always around when these things happen to me), who payed the driver, gave me money, consoled me and helped me get a train to Hyderabad that afternoon.

Since then I've been trying to understand why these things happen to me, it's not normal to have something happen every other weekend, is it? So I started wondering: Did I do something wrong? Was it my fault? Could I have done something differently? (not in this case, I think) Has someone put the evil eye on me? Whyy? Is some occult power at work? As I've said before, we try to find reasons for things, no matter how absurd, even when there are none.

So I was trying to convince myself to be rational and stop trying to find ludicrous reasons, when it hit me: It was the mangoes!!

It makes perfect sense:

1. I angered the mango gods. I challenged them openly and thought I could get away with it.

2. In Hinduism, the perfectly ripe mango is often held by Lord Ganesha. Outside the wedding hall there was a Ganesha statue. AND Ganesha is the creator and remover of obstacles.

3. Ten days later, which coincidentally is the crown radius of a mango tree and the duration of Ganesha's most important festival, I got terribly sick after drinking mango juice. This caused all the other problems.

This is not superstition. It's scientific. So there's only one thing to do: Extend a public apology for saying Mexican mangoes are better. I take it back! Forgive me! I was arrogant and conceited. I was presumptuous. I went above myself. I will never do it again!

(I hope this is enough...Cross your fingers. Maybe i should do a mango offering at the temple? coconut?)

Micro Health Insurance I: An Introduction

During my time here I am working on a project to asses the impact of health insurance in rural India. Health shocks (accidents, prolonged illnesses, the need to be hospitalized) are among the biggest and least predictable forms of uncertainty that a poor family faces. There are two important economic costs associated with illness: the cost of the medical care for diagnosis and treatment, and the loss in income associated with reduced labor supply and productivity. However, less than 1% of households in rural India are estimated to have formal health insurance policies. Without insurance or access to credit, these shocks may sharply lower consumption in the short-term or decrease investments in very productive assets. In the extreme case the absence of insurance can lead to a poverty trap, where due to illness the family receives less income which impedes them to get proper medical attention, which prolongs the illness, which results in less income and so on.

With credit the household can smooth consumption and investment in face of the health shock (that is, to maintain a more stable level of consumption without sharp fluctuations due to unexpected events), but it might be very expensive smoothing compared to insurance, since with insurance the household only pays a premium that is the cost of the shock weighted by its probability, and with credit the household pays the full amount of the medical expenses plus the interest on the loan. Preliminary data from the project shows that most households borrow in order to cover medical expenses, which leads to the question on how are they going to repay (especially if that money is not being used in any productive investment). The most probable answer is by lowering consumption, which will leave the family worse off.

In reality there are many informal insurance mechanisms (outside the market), especially in traditional rural areas. These mechanisms are effective (and sometimes efficient) in dealing with idiosyncratic shocks, but not systemic shocks that affect the whole community. In addition, as traditional communities modernize, many of these mechanisms are weakened by societal transformation due to migration, diversification of income sources, splitting of households, among other reasons. The availability of market-based insurance then becomes more and more important.

So why don't people have formal insurance? Why don't insurance companies offer it? As with any insurance product there are informational asymmetries that lead to adverse selection and moral hazard, plus some special characteristics of health insurance that complicate the incentive design, plus the lack of statistical information on frequency of health events in rural communities that difficult calculating premiums, plus the high transaction costs of offering the insurance in these areas, plus demand-side problems as households are not used to these products. Micro health insurance schemes attempt to overcome these difficulties. How? You will have to wait for a future post. I hope you can bear the suspense...

Superstition

India is a very superstitious place. People will not take any major decision in their lives without consulting an astrologer or without ensuring the appropriate signs are there. There are auspicious and inauspicious times for weddings, births, ceremonies. You should not marry someone if your astral charts don't match up. People protect themselves from the evil eye daily by putting a dot on their forehead. If you're going out and someone sneezes once, you are either not to go out at all or wait 10 minutes to avert the bad thing that would have happened. If milk boils and overflows it is unlucky and you have to put some yogurt in it to counteract the effect; BUT if you've just moved to a new house you have to let the milk boil and overflow. If a lizard falls on you, it depends whether you're male or female and what side of your body it falls on if it is unlucky or lucky. Black cats are bad, white ones are good. A twitch in your eye can mean you'll see a close friend or that you'll have visitors. And these are but a few I've come across.

I think superstition is a way of trying to control or know the total unexpectedness and randomness of human existence. There is no way to know what is going to happen, or to direct it one way or the other. By doing things in a certain order or not doing things because some sign was contrary to its success we won't really influence the results. And if you think about it, deeper questions arise, as for example, if you believe that if you see sign x scenario A will happen and you do something to avert that so you end up in scenario B, who is to say you weren't destined to scenario B to begin with?

But no matter how irrational superstition might seem, I think we all have our little superstitious beliefs. I certainly do. I have my personal signs I consider lucky or unlucky. For example, if the time and the radio station I'm listening to match, i consider it lucky (let's say, listening to station 105.7 at 10:57). Or if I think of a song and suddenly they play it on the radio, that's lucky, or seeing all cars around me are the same color (I just realized all this have to do with being in a car. I guess I spent a lot of time driving in DF).

I wonder how all these signs came to be. And how we can think that something as random as a sneeze can actually signify something bad will happen. I guess we just try to hold on to anything we can in order to avoid reality: we have no control over anything, we have no way of knowing what lies ahead, and we have no way of knowing how any single event will fit into the larger picture of our lives. But once we start to accept this, it's such much easier to sit back and enjoy the ride (even if it's on a rickshaw!).