Kerala is known as ‘God’s own Country’. And for good reason; it is quite stunningly beautiful, virtually everywhere you look… except for a lot of the bits where man has been and dumped a load of broken and stripped down tuk-tuks in a heap. But my first question, particularly in India, is always ‘which God’? And as always, that is never an easy question to answer. Who are the local people and to whom do they pray?

There are more churches than any shrines, temples or mosques combined. But that’s mainly due to the essential humility and lack of ‘flash’ of the Hindus, who are indeed a majority in Kerala, as opposed to the inevitable grandeur and flamboyance of the once governing Catholic Portuguese and the awe-inspiring but austere brutalistic churches of the Dutch Protestants who followed. And then there’s mosques here, but fairly few and far between considering there’s a large Muslim minority in the region. And it’s all fairly harmonious in God’s own Country, even though there used to be a significant but minuscule Jewish community here too. In Cochin mainly but by 1948 when Israel was officially ‘an independent nation’, following on a year after Indian independence from British rule and also separation from Pakistan, virtually all of the Jews had left for pastures new.

And they’d been here since the 9th, 10th Century. They were the original ‘Malabar Jews’, who were joined just 600 years later by the ‘Paradesi Jews’ who came from southern Europe. A third influx at the end of the 18th century of ‘Baghdadi Jews’ provided yet more people of a proudly similar yet slightly different cultural heritage. But, of course, they were Jews. And thus were never ever going to agree on… pretty much anything. So, the last ‘departure’ was essentially due to such diminished populations of Jews who were not even allowed to marry the ‘other Jews’, who lived up the road. Through bickering, arrogance, stubbornness and an unfailing ability to ‘kvetch’ about any and everything, the Jews of Kerala made themselves ‘extinct’.

The Indian people are, on the whole, (I don’t think I’ve met all 1.6 billion yet, just feels like I meet them every day on the roads), delightful. Friendly. Genuinely so. And, of course, they ‘speak English’, which helps. Though the ‘local’ Indian dialect is Malayalam. And it is such an amazingly tongue-twisting language, as they ‘swallow’ half their syllables cos the words are sooooo long. And when that is applied to ‘English’, it really doesn’t sound like English at all. So we ‘converse’ all day with our host nationals, but it’s actually 2 different conversations being spoken and not much understanding in either direction. However, the word ‘curry’ is fully understandable in any language and by Jews of any ethnic division or nation of origin.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx