Fort Cochin was no longer the quaint little town that I had left. The English had departed to their motherland. The meek and mild Jews heeded the call of the Promised Land and left in trickles and there were no longer any kosher dinners to go to on Sabbath. Many of the Anglo-Indians left seeking greener pastures in the Gulf, Australia and elsewhere. I found it difficult to reconcile myself with the changed environment — Fort Cochin had lost its laid-back lifestyle. The town was crammed with home-stays and curio shops. It existed only for tourism.
Walking down Petercellie and Princess Streets after dusk was not the same anymore — radios and gramophones did not caress you with soulful melody as it once did. The mellifluous voice of Jim Reeves did not implore you ‘Please release me let me go…’ nor did Elvis seduce you with ‘Are you lonesome tonight?’ There were no Anglo-Indian dances to go to.
Huge areas of the Parade Ground is bereft of grass, there is no organised cricket, no men in whites and two gentlemen umpires in long overcoats, no ladies keeping score. There is no hockey or football played — only Rufus D’Souza imparting his magical football skills, day in and day out, to youngsters, giving a semblance that the ground was once a hyperactive playing field.
The ‘Grand Dame’ of Cochin, the old banyan tree still stands sentinel over the ground, but with the inevitable sag and droop of age it appeared skeletal. The tree was our favourite rendezvous point, where we gathered at any time of day, to wait for the ringing of the school bell, watch the games at the Parade and the girls go by; to discuss and debate any subject under the sun, gossip, tease, fight and connive our daily plots. It offered us the space and shade; it trapped the breeze from the sea with its enormous tentacles and fanned us with its swaying branches and tremulous leaves. The Vedas revere the Banyan as Kalpakavrishka, an abode of the gods; Milton describes it in glowing terms in Paradise Lost. To us she was the B-school that taught us the values of camaraderie, teamwork and solidarity, a place where we honed our ‘street savvy’ skills.
Her disciples, the ‘Knights of the Banyan’ as we liked calling ourselves, had scattered to all corners of the world — many like her fallen leaves no longer with us. Whenever we are in town we pay homage to our godmother.
Yuletide was special in the Fort Cochin of my youth. The English companies paid bonuses to their staff during this time and there was a general air of merrymaking, dances to go to. The shops added to the festive mood by decorating their premises with tinsel streamers, bulbs, Chinese lanterns and Santa masks. At the Cochin Club Santa Claus comes, in high yuletide spirit on the back of an elephant! Boys and girls serenaded the streets with guitars singing carols and other popular English songs.
In the Fort Cochin of today Yuletide does not exude the same joyousness that it once did. You could feel the festivity in the air then and did not require an organised sham like the Cochin Carnival to be drummed up, as it is now.
A gracious era has moved on and as Jim Reeves sang: ‘Adios amigo, adios my friend, the road we have travelled has come to an end…’