Jasmine and Arnica by Nicola Naylor & Kate Adie

Author:Nicola Naylor & Kate Adie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eye Books
Published: 2001-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

COCHIN: A FAMILY OF THE PLANTATIONS

Slowly, we chugged our way through the waterways of the coastal countryside. As elsewhere in Kerala, the vegetation on the islands and banks on either side of the channels or surrounding the lagoons was dense and tropical. The boat crossed many wide lagoons, which narrowed into networks of intricate waterways and opened again into large areas of flat water. Vultures skimmed the mirror-like surface, before shaking strong, wide wings and soaring into the sky again where they cruised in the air. I listened to them fluttering in the overhanging palm fronds when we slipped down the narrow channels under a canopy of branches, shaded from the fierce sun. The scent of mimosa rose from the dark green foliage and I imagined how its blossoms dotted the verdant greenery like yellow fairy-lights.

Along the banks, children waved and ran to keep up with the boat. They shouted, “Pen, please. One pen, please,” and repeated, “hello”, ceaselessly. We were as much an attraction to the locals as they were to us: spectator and spectacle gradually merged.

The Dutch woman knew that I could not see. I had registered her listening to Padma’s conversation with the boatman at the outset. She nudged her partner to make room for me when I clambered up on the cabin roof where all seven passengers perched, best to view backwater life. Her volunteering of succinct and useful descriptions made my impressions clearer. She commented on women threading coir, a by-product of coconut, and then on groups of people picking snails from the stone walls built down the banks. A picture of small fishing communities, supplementing their income with mat-making and snail-farming, was painted delicately in my mind. The huts were mainly made of mud with no electricity cables in sight. There were no modern amenities. She described how at the end of villages, small Punch-and-Judy-style cabins jutted over the water: people backed into them and defecated straight into the water. I heard youngsters splashing, women plopping pitchers, men urinating, and people of all ages washing themselves behind cloth screens.

When she picked out the cantilevered Chinese fishing-nets, I nodded as if I already knew what one of these looked like. I could have asked for a more detailed description, but I am always slightly embarrassed to admit to the excruciatingly simple gaps in my knowledge, which are nearly always of things I have never had enough sight to see for myself. If I was shown a clear picture of something as a child or given a full description, I can rely on memory or imagination to understand and re-create it. Cantilevered fishing-nets are missing.

By the early afternoon there was more traffic on the water. Small boats stank of fish and larger barges were heavy with hay. A quacking, and I pictured dark paddling patches of ducks, each family glued together so that they appeared like a dark puddle on a road surface.

Suddenly our engine spluttered into ominous silence and we drifted in the middle of a lagoon.

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