We had just finally managed to get ourselves to the Fort Kochi beach. It was for the first time I saw the sea. I would be amazed by the relentless waves that just come one after the other with ever more force. But, before that, we had to savour the freedom of being thousands of miles away from anyone who had any authority over us. So, we stepped not to the beach as we left our cab, but to the lane that went right opposite. To a bar.
After bumping into a few who won’t understand our Hindi or English, we saw the beautiful billboard saying Beer. We had little time on our hands and a lot to explore, or so we thought. So right to the beers. Bottoms up and off we go to the beach with the sweet buzz.
Saurabh, my trip partner like in almost everything during my brief sojourn in Kerala, is from Maharashtra. He was not new to beaches. But I was. I spent good two hours capturing the beach, waves, fishermen, jetties and ships that went by occasionally. And in that, I had my fill of the beach, at least of the Fort Kochi beach, which I was told was not the best beach experience in Kerala and something I found out when I happened to visit the beach in Thrissur. Big, clean and calm.
Anyway, we hadn’t come all the way from Kottayam to just waste our day at a midget of a beach. So we headed to our next place on the list. The Jew Street.
Etched inside the lanes of the city, it’s a well-kept place. It’s supposed to be a heritage site of sorts, maybe I’m short of the right word. But frankly it comes across as anything but a heritage site. It looks more like a copy of some street from a Mediterranean town with stars of David dashed here and there. Had the colour pallet been not touched much it would have looked like what it is supposed to be. Anyway, the Synagogue, the place’s main attraction was locked down. So we went into a few souvenir shops to loaf away time. And as irony would have it, I — I’m from Jammu and Kashmir — ran into Kashmiri shawl seller in the Jew Street in Kochi Kerala. So much for meeting new people! We loitered around for a while and started looking for someplace to eat.
It was almost 2–3 pm and we hadn't had anything except the munchies with Beer on the Fort Kochi Beach since the morning. Lunch was to be the next stop and a Malayalee friend had also recommended a local dish, which she said was very good, but unfortunately I couldn’t remember the name. But we did try. At least till we bumped into a board that read Beer. Maybe we were not that hungry after all.
That board on the street pointed to what looked like an almost deserted corridor, but can looks be more deceptive? At the end of it lay a restaurant that sat right on the water bank. Calm, serene and upbeat, that was the mood there. The little appetite we had just vanished. There were good conversations and Beers till the sun watched over us.
Sometime when the sun had almost set we got on to the most challenging part of the trip; Two drunk North Indians, who knew no Malayalam, trying to find a bus to Kottayam from Kochi.
We somehow did and got back having travelled over 100 km a day — Kottayam to Kochi and then back — just to have a few beers. But it just didn’t feel like that. Perhaps it was naïveté only, but who said it can’t be fun?!
