Remembering Kochi - Part Four

Kochi of the sixties permitted no beginnings, no ends.

Bulk of the commerce in the city was transacted within a rectangular piece of land bordered by M.G. Road on the east, Banerji Road on the north, Shanmugham Road on the west and Durbar Hall road on the south. This block of land accommodated the Central Market, principal shopping centres and commodity business houses along Cloth Bazar Road, Jews Street, Market Road and several smaller roads where traders of different faiths offered commodities and services of all sorts to the buyers.

No one kew where Jews Street started; at Pullepady junction or at Padma junction or at Flower junction but the street ended no where. The westward stretch from Flower junction, however, was crowded with dirty puddles all along and hardware vendors on both sides. Steel traders from outside the State set up their offices there; one of them, a steel manufacturer from Mahadevapura in Bangalore, had its office on the first floor of a shabby building. A wooden staircase in poor state of repairs led to their office.

In the seventies, a young lad from Thrissur joined the steel company, immediately after his graduation from Kerala Varma College, as office manager. The diligent  young man steadily broadened the business and positioned his company as a strong competitor to the established steel traders. Soon the shrewd man realised he had opportunities to make a fast buck by making the most of his status as the depot manager and, with the help of a few friends, embarked on a tour of embezzlement.  He opened many bogus companies and brought truck loads of steel to sell in the local market evading central sales tax. Every evening, his office desk would be filled with cash as he was unable to use normal banking services due to the grey nature of his business.

Sivaraman, one of his acquaintences on whose name he had opened a bogus company, knew about the cash stored in office. One evening, Sivaraman visited the office in company of an accomplice, slashed the manager with a country sword and escaped with lakhs of rupees stored there. Anil Kumar survived the attack though, but with serious injuries.

A few shops away from the steel company’s office was a hardware store. Lawrence, a young hardware merchant,  hailed from a wealthy business family in Kunnamkulam which owned many hardware shops in central and north Kerala. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the youth had extravagent tastes. Soon he fell in love with a penniless counter girl at a travel agency which shocked his orthodox family. They disowned the prodigal son and banished him from home and the family businesses. With no resources to fall back on, the young man turned to fraudulent deals to be eventually caught by law and ended up in jail.

Travelling north from Shenoy’s cinema, one entered a small junction which hosted a famous tailoring shop, Byblos, owned by Antony, Antho to his friends, a favorite place for most of the youngsters, particularly girls. Antho started his career in Bahrain and returned to Kochi in the seventies to work in his brother’s tailoring shop, Thara Tailors, where he paraded his couture skills, first on himself and later on his young customers whose number grew by the day. Later, gathering a small capital together, Antho started his first own venture, Fila Tailors, near Kacheripady. The ambitious young man soon moved his business to a larger place, renamed his business as Byblos and opened a branch in Palarivattom, bringing in a partner to his business. The first setback of his career was waiting for him there. A few unintelligent business decisions and a break up with his partner saw the man in heavy debt, forcing him to move to Al Ain in the U.A.E., looking for greener pastures and ways to pay off the debts that seemed to pile up with time.

A few years of hard work in Al Ain and his innate enterprise helped him to save enough money to clear the debts. Antony, the ever smiling handsome dude, is now happy managing his new fashion business, a few steps away from his old shop, Byblos.

In 1947, as India was gathering itself to embrace freedom from colonial rule, a young man was planning his future. He opened a small textile shop in Cloth Bazar Road, specialising in silk sarees. The shop was so small that there were no pieces of furniture, the sales girls sat on floor mats and the buyers stood on the pavement selecting the goods of their choice. Exclusivity of their stocks and the smiling countenance of the owner attracted the upper class women by hoards to the store and business soared. Jayalakshmi Silks, the textile major with many huge outlets all over Kerala, had its humble beginnings at that narrow selling space.

Years have transformed Kochi into an aspiring metropolitan city but denuded it of the grace it once had. The frenetic pace of professed progress has made life complex and difficult. The trees that hovered as a canopy over the wild celebrations of a Santhosh Trophy victory have been shaved off to accommodate the metro rail project, wiping off the memories of a generation along with it. The massive escalation in the number of buildings, a lot more than the frail roads could handle, has clogged the city’s arteries. The stench of excrement at Kaloor junction is now replaced with the disgusting odour of gasoline, a pollutant of higher order. The open lands where boys played games of varied sorts have disappeared, ugly structures have taken roots in their places. The omnipresence of garbage, but, remains.

We have lost the Kochi of Antony and Lawrence and Anil Kumar the way we lost the multiplication tables to the calculating machines, the way the fragrance of the flowers leaves the man whose nose has been put under the surgical knife; Kochi has been shorn of its purity.

Life is not pure or simple any longer.