God's country

At first, it was fishing boats. Wooden, simple, brightly (we Westerners say "garishly") colored. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, glaring and cluttered in the dirty water, air heavy with trash-burnt haze hanging low.

The slightly sooty white ships (snapped in a sepia-toned world of yesteryear) passing close aboard, sailors at attention formed up on every deck, sweaty, saluting smartly, holding salutes into the distance, long past "carry on". Chinese fishing nets draped delicately, cobwebbed, on the tarnished shoreline.

"We call this 'God's country'," crowed the smartly-togged commander at my elbow, resplendent in faded whites. As we approached the pier, the conning officer's helm and line commands were drowned out, raucously, by a tired band in sagging formation, two sweating petty officers posing at either end of a briskly-lettered sign, red on white: "Indian Coast Guard Welcomes USCGC BOUTWELL to Kochi."


The music at times petered out, but given an important command to the lee helm or bow prop operator, the plaintive strains overswept our hearing again, instantly, stridently. It was hot, and hazy, and the whole pier area, everything in sight, was swept clean of people, just for us, rabble cordoned just out of reach. I squinted even through polarized lenses. Still, all the eggy whitewash in the world couldn't cover the mess of Cochin.

We swayed through the crowded streets in shabby luxury buses, worn with time, seats filled incongruously by officers in trops, gleaming white combo covers on laps, peering out through ragged curtains at the world of dust and dirt and grime and striving poverty just the other side of thin glass, inches away at every intersection, chaos and teeming livelihoods undaunted by a cacophony of car horns, moped horns, shouting, pushing, shouldering.

At night, the air was thicker, ashy with burnt trash, red, thick with fat bugs eager to bite, the back of your throat seared. Lights swam back and forth on the water, dark, oily. We clustered in a "safe" hotel, slouched on soft leather couches, five-star on the water, under the verandah, smoked with incense, icy, expensive cocktails in henna'd hands.

Outside, the sewage ran raw through the streets under concrete-block sidewalks. A large, rusty pipe fitting protruded from a cracked wall; above it, a hand-lettered sign: "Potable Water Connection". Every shopkeeper was a hustler, every meal suspect, every transaction scrutinized. Mopeds swarmed around us, driver smartly attired and helmeted, wife side-saddle behind him, child clinging to gas cap, passengers all bare-headed, husband clutching a couple spare helmets in front of him, heedless of hazards.

We disembarked from the musty bus into an oasis, the training center for our hosts and counterparts, colonially time-warped, deep mahoganies and linen-draped wicker, white lights strung through trees in the humid evening, china cups of milky tea in the hot afternoons. Strictly divided: enlisted in the rear, officers up front, captain on a low, velvety couch inches down from the stage, served silver-trayed delicacies by junior personnel. A nine-gun salute. Flamethrowers. Choreographed acrobatic stick-fighting. A long, static, epic mime-opera in drag. Delicious, spicy curries and breathtaking, colorful silks.

A world grasping and unregulated, scrambling over the ruins of a colonial, civilized, casted past. Marked by our words, our skin, our first-world tastes, we struggled to play both gracious host and humble guest, stumbling through ceremony and ritual unfamiliar to us artless Americans, hardening our hearts against questionable need and inescapable touts and beggars. A free market spurning every attempt at regulation.

And in the evenings, around sunset, before the incinerators sparked up and the bug swarms thickened, strains of music wafting across the water, low, determined, calls to prayer.