Fort Kochi

Today I'm in Fort Kochi in Kochi/Chochin.This City is another part of Karala. I wandered around the city a little with my driver/guide and picked up a cell phone. The experience turned out to be interesting. First off, they speak a different language here than Tamil (which is what my driver speaks). Second, my drivers english is not very good, and neither is that of the cell-phone guys. Anyway, he's Indian, so he was trying to do the talking though he really couldn't communicate with them much better than I could. It was an interesitng example of how Indians don't always understand each other so well. Compounding problems, the cell-phone guys required a passport size photo in order to activate my phone... you would think that this would not be an issue considering that we were in a shopping mall and that right across the hall there was a photo studio and one hour photo lab... but this is India. You need to think in "India time". The lab attempted to totally gank me on the photos. They wanted something like 300 for 8 photos. I told them, no way, I only needed one photo. "OK, OK" ...Everyone always says "OK, OK" or even "OK, OK, OK" when they are dealing...They said I could have four photos for like 100, if I waited until 3pm. (it was about 2 at the time). I tryed to talk them down, but they were not having it. I went back to the cell phone guys to tell them about the hold up which created a hubbub. It seems they had already opened the phone and recoreded all the serials and stuff. Basically, they'd pretty much already processed the sale. (No harm there, we'd already made the deal)... soon I found myself talking to their boss. Once he understood what was going on he went over to the photo place and gave them a talking to. We even managed to bargain the guy down in the process and get him to shoot the photo imediately instead of having to wait until 3 (of course, by now it was 2:30 anyway). I think I ended up paying 60 for two photos, which didn't really matter to me since I only needed one anyway and at least it was cheaper than 100. I'm not sure what the cell phone boss guy told the photo studio boss guy. But I guess it went soemthing like this "You are screwing up MY business and it's pissing me off". Whatever he said, things went much more smoothly from that point on. I got my photos and my phone and we were out of there in a few minutes.

While in Kochi I was able to catch a performance of Kathacali, Karalas calssical form of dance drama. I found it interesting in some ways and kind of lame in other ways. While the performances follow the basic framework of a classical story the exact movements are not choregraphed exactly. Instead, they are improvised as is the mucic, which is provided by two drummers and a cymbal player /singer. On the one hand, it's pretty amazing that they performances are as good as they are. On the other hand, at times the lack of precise choreography shows. The the whole thing just seems silly. Like a full sized puppet show for kids. I had to at least try it once but I don't think I'll ever go to another performance.




As you can see from the photos, the makeup and costumes are quite elaborate. It's hard to see in the photos, but even the actors eyes are dyed red! The MC told us that all the make uses natural products. For example, they eyes are dyed red using a particuar type of seed. The face makeup ueses natural pigments of certain stones in a base of coconut oil. The paper face appliances are glued using rice paste. The makeup takes about two hours to apply and is an optional part of the show. I guess you could call it the pre-show. The actors grind the pigement fresh and then take turns doing each others makeup. I found this part of the show nearly as intersting as the actual performance.

I got some great photos along the beach during Magic Hour.





As the sun set, the fishermen started to come in and auction off their catches. Standing in the middle of the fish auction was an amazing experience. I totally failed to get any pictures that can convey it. I did get a bad shots at least.