My father’s boyhood Banyan
“This has been here since I was a boy,” my father said happily, patting its trunk like the back of an old friend. “Isn’t it a beauty?” It was a banyan—elegant and intricate, India’s national tree. Like Spanish moss, it germinates in the crevices of other trees and grows without need of soil. It can wrap itself so completely around its host that its limbs become indistinguishable from the tree underneath.…I watched my father taking in the tree’s splay of branches, considering the parallels between banyans and rootless people—our people—and whether our roots were more like those of the tree...
Read MoreChinese Fishing Nets
It’s not the Portuguese influence that dazzles along the shore at Fort Kochi. As we neared the beach, the giant Chinese fishing nets came into full view, filling the horizon, a majestic row of cantilevered contraptions. The nets, like the juggler, are something of a mystery. Share...
Read MoreCochin’s Santa Cruz Basilica
We spent most of our days at the Santa Cruz Basilica. All through its history the church has invariably been in the midst of transformation. The Portuguese built it in the sixteenth century, the Dutch stored their arms in it and the British demolished it, only to change their minds and rebuild it in the nineteenth century. Share...
Read MoreMining the paper trail
We hunched over practically illegible record books, sweating next to a moody fan and watched over by a chipped statue of Saint Anthony and the hardboiled gaze of Cochin’s last Portuguese bishop. Every ten minutes or so my father and I traded profound observations. “Everyone here married their cousins.” “Look how many people died of worms.” “Worms and swelling.” “Swelling—is that a disease?” Share...
Read MoreOn the road to Nilgiri
Stephen, whose long legs were not built for Indian buses or back seats, sat up front with Joseph. They formed an easy bond,unfolding maps, studying the route north from Kochi. Joseph spoke Malayalam and a little English, but how little we couldn’t be sure. Stephen inquired about mileage, diesel engines, and the peculiar honking protocol of Indian roadways (two for passing, one for changing lanes? for going too fast, too slow?). Joseph mostly nodded his replies and laughed. Share...
Read MoreJungle at foot of Nilgiri Hills
We reached the jungle not long after the mountains materialized. The light changed instantly, reaching through the leafy canopy with golden fingers, scattering sun and shadows. …We stopped to buy young coconuts from a lonesome roadside stall and drank from them by the car. The whole region, by decree of the United Nations, is one of the world’s protected zones, home to tigers and the last remaining wild elephant population in Asia. Ours was the only vehicle in sight that afternoon. It was eerily quiet, except for invisible creatures that cawed and chattered near enough that I ignored the...
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