*COCHIN BEFORE IT BECAME KOCHI*
_Confessions of a Seventy-Feet-Road Delinquent_
By Mohan Murti
There are cities in which one grows up.
And then there are cities which grow into you.
Cochin of the 1960s and 1970s belonged emphatically to the second category.
It was not yet the polished, apartment-studded, Metro-connected, café-infested Kochi of today. It was Cochin — proudly, fragrantly and somewhat chaotically Cochin — Queen of the Arabian Sea, commercial capital of Kerala, port of spices and ships, naval uniforms and cinema posters, bakeries and bars, bookshops and bell-bottoms.
Port cities have a character that inland cities can never quite manufacture.
They smell different.
Cochin certainly did.
The Arabian Sea supplied salt. The harbour supplied diesel. Mattancherry supplied spices. The markets supplied fish. Broadway supplied humanity. Cochin Bakery supplied butter cakes.
And the bars supplied the remaining fragrance.
Even the beer somehow tasted better than its German counterparts — a proposition which, after several decades in Germany, I realise may not withstand scientific scrutiny but which remains constitutionally protected by nostalgia.
Perhaps it was the humidity.
Perhaps it was youth.
Perhaps beer simply tastes better when you are drinking it without anybody knowing where you are.
I fondly recall the Naval Base — one of my favourite haunts and One Monumental Act of Idiocy
INS Venduruthy and the Southern Naval Command gave that part of Cochin a character entirely its own — sailors, officers, uniforms, ships, the harbour, the Naval Club and that unmistakable atmosphere of a city permanently conversing with the sea.
The Naval Club was both resource and resort during those murderous Cochin summers. We had friends there, including Sanjay Puri and Fazal, and therefore possessed what teenagers regarded as diplomatic immunity.
One afternoon, Fazal, Sanjay and I arrived at the Venduruthy Bridge and conceived an idea of such breathtaking stupidity that only three perfectly healthy teenage boys could possibly have considered it reasonable.
We decided to jump.
It was low tide.
The drop must have been about five metres.
Below us were the inward-flowing harbour waters.
Today, a responsible adult would have conducted a risk assessment, checked the tide tables, consulted the Port Trust, notified the Navy, obtained insurance and probably called a cardiologist.
We jumped.
Three bodies descended from Venduruthy Bridge with all the aerodynamics of sacks of Palakkad rice.
Splash!
And then we swam across towards the Naval Club as though this were the most natural mode of transportation available to citizens of Cochin.
When I think about it today, I get the shivers.
At sixteen, it was adventure.
At sixty-nine, it looks remarkably like attempted suicide by stupidity.
The gods were clearly working overtime during my adolescence.
A City Suffering From Cinema
Cochin was cinema-mad.
Not cinema-loving.
Cinema-mad.
Sridhar was our temple of English cinema. Opened in 1964, it had the almost unbelievable distinction of being Kerala’s first air-conditioned theatre. Entering Sridhar from a Cochin afternoon was itself worth the ticket price.
Outside: 34 degrees, 90 per cent humidity.
Inside: Switzerland.
You could have shown us the boring Income Tax Act for three hours and we would probably have stayed.
Then there were Padma and Shenoys — and across the water in Fort Cochin, Zaina, later Kokers.
Zaina was special. The Koker family became synonymous with cinema in Fort Cochin, and Shahid Koker was a schoolmate.
In those days the arrival of a major English film in Cochin was not entertainment.
It was a civic event.
There was no Netflix.
No Amazon Prime.
No YouTube.
No smartphone.
No advance booking from your bed.
There was a queue.
There was black-market ticketing.
There was anticipation.
And there was the terrifying possibility that after standing for forty-five minutes somebody would close the little ticket-window exactly when your face reached it.
That taught our generation resilience long before management consultants discovered the word.
Willingdon Island — Cochin’s Drawing Room
My favourite part of the city, however, was Willingdon Island.
Even its history sounded romantic: a great artificial island raised from material dredged while creating the modern harbour, joined to Ernakulam through the Venduruthy Bridge, carrying the port, railway, Navy and that wonderful old Malabar Hotel.
Our family took long sunset walks along the harbour-side shores.
Ships rested in the distance.
Launches moved across the water.
The evening breeze came in from the Arabian Sea.
And Cochin, which could be noisy, sweaty and argumentative by day, suddenly became dignified.
The Malabar Hotel — today’s Taj Malabar — was one of my father’s favourite places.
It was there that Appa taught us children to swim.
My two brothers, my sister and I were literally pushed into the water under his supervision and learned the elementary principle that has remained useful ever since:
if you stop moving, you sink, he always said.
An excellent swimming lesson.
An even better philosophy of life.
And then there was M.G. Road.
Before it became M.G. Road, everybody knew it as Seventy Feet Road.
Seventy feet!
To the Cochin of those days this sounded roughly equivalent to the Autobahn.
There were barber shops, textile shops, jewellers, restaurants, hotels, cinemas, banks and businesses of every conceivable description.
Woodlands Hotel.
Grand Hotel.
Luciya.
International Hotel.
Padma.
Sridhar.
Shenoys.
Everything eventually found its way to M.G. Road.
All roads led to Rome.
In Cochin, all roads led to Seventy Feet Road.
Mahatma Gandhi, who preached simplicity, abstinence and control of the senses, might have been mildly alarmed to discover what was being conducted in his name.
Jewellery.
Cinema.
Restaurants.
Bars.
Shopping.
Pastries.
Capitalism had occupied Gandhi Road without firing a shot.
And bang in the middle of this civilisation stood that immortal institution:
COCHIN BAKERY.
Established long before our generation discovered calories, Cochin Bakery deserves, in my view, protection as a Geographical Indication.
Possibly also UNESCO status.
Its cakes and pastries were irresistible.
Had Mahatma Gandhi himself walked down the road bearing his name and encountered the aroma emerging from Cochin Bakery, even the Father of the Nation might have paused.
“One small pastry,” he might have reasoned, “cannot seriously damage the freedom struggle.”
But Cochin Bakery had another attraction for me: my friend snd owner of Cochin Bakery Sukhdev — Sudhan.
Sudhan loved music.
Not Carnatic music.
Not Hindustani music.
Not necessarily even Indian music.
Western pop.
And somehow this man had mysterious channels into the international netherworld.
Long before Spotify, streaming, downloads or even the humble cassette had democratised music, Sudhan obtained the latest Western vinyl records.
I never discovered how.
Ships?
Sailors?
Diplomatic pouch?
CIA?
The Vatican?
Sudhan never revealed his sources.
Albums appeared in Cochin almost before the rest of India knew they existed.
I sometimes suspected R.D. Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji and half the Bombay music industry should have been calling Cochin Bakery for advance intelligence.
Sudhan was effectively Cochin’s unofficial disc jockey.
He also possessed the trendiest sound system imaginable.
And because he was my good friend, I enjoyed privileged access to his albums.
In today’s language I had a premium subscription.
The subscription cost nothing.
The password was Sudhan.
Every city requires characters.
Cochin had an embarrassment of riches.
There was Bullet Sally.
The scion of a prosperous steel-business family, he was invariably dressed in spotless white: white shirt, white dhoti, and astride that magnificent 1968 Royal Enfield Bullet.
The Bullet did not move.
It announced itself.
Dug-dug-dug-dug-dug.
Then Sally would accelerate down the road, his white shirt and dhoti responding to Kerala’s crosswinds with such enthusiasm that from a distance he resembled a United Nations peacekeeping flag travelling at 70 kilometres an hour.
His preferred flight path appeared to connect several of Cochin’s celebrated watering holes — Luciya, Casino, Grand Hotel and International Hotel.
Air India had international routes.
Sally had bar routes.
And his Bullet apparently maintained a better timetable.
Smooth Larry and the Dunhill Corporation
Then there was my friend Larry Ismail.
Tall.
Lanky.
Street-smart.
Immaculately casual in jeans and a neat shirt.
A cigarette permanently occupied one hand.
A Dunhill packet occupied the other.
I sometimes wondered whether both had been issued with his birth certificate.
Larry smoked like a steam locomotive climbing the Western Ghats.
He was performing millions of rupees worth of pro-bono advertising for Dunhill.
The packet was always prominently displayed — presumably to prevent some malicious Cochin citizen from suspecting that Larry might be smoking a Charminar.
Later in life, after his father passed away, Larry inherited valuable properties and became enormously wealthy, eventually selling prime holdings along M.G. Road.
Somewhere, I suspect, Mahatma Gandhi permitted himself a small, cynical smile.
Siddique and Subtle Fazal
There was also my late senior in school and affectionate neighbour, Siddique.
His younger brother Fazal was quite the opposite — gentle, understated and a very good friend.
Every neighbourhood in old Cochin possessed this ecosystem: elder brothers, younger brothers, cousins, schoolmates, neighbours and friends.
There was no social media.
There was something considerably more dangerous.
Everybody knew everybody.
If you committed a crime at 4 p.m., your mother could receive an eyewitness report by 4.07.
Cochin had invented social networking decades before Silicon Valley.
Grand Music — was Appa’s Vinyl University
Music filled our home too.
Grand Music was part of the city’s musical geography, and its greatest patron — at least according to our household accounts — must have been my father.
Our home filled with vinyl.
G.N. Balasubramaniam.
M.S. Subbulakshmi.
M.L. Vasanthakumari.
Madurai Mani Iyer.
Semmangudi.
Ariyakudi.
Chembai.
The great masters entered our drawing room through revolving black discs.
If Sudhan supplied my Western musical education, Appa supplied the classical counterattack.
One room might contain Carnatic music of sublime philosophical depth.
Another contained Western pop.
Somewhere between the two, my confused adolescent brain developed.
Now let me walk you down Broadway — Narrower Than Its Name, Larger Than Life
Cochin’s great shopping street was Broadway.
The name itself was one of the city’s finest jokes.
Broadway was anything but broad.
Two pedestrians, three bicycles, one handcart and an Ambassador car could create a traffic problem requiring United Nations mediation.
Yet Broadway contained everything.
Books
Textiles.
Stationery.
Perfumes.
Hardware.
Imported goods.
Umbrellas.
Shoes.
Spices.
Things you needed.
Things you did not need.
And things you bought only because somebody said they had just arrived from Dubai.
Near the beginning stood Pai & Co, my father’s favourite bookshop — and ours.
It became my real university.
My friend Ram and I considerably enriched our knowledge of the world there.
We read practically everything.
With one unfortunate exception.
Prescribed textbooks.
Perry Mason was infinitely more urgent than geometry.
James Hadley Chase offered considerably more practical information about human nature than school civics.
Alistair MacLean was preferable to algebra.
And Ayn Rand introduced philosophical complications that our teachers had not budgeted for.
Reading everything except what one was supposed to read became second nature.
Looking back, I have no regrets.
Examinations determine where you go next year.
Curiosity can determine where you go in real life.
Cochin was also governed not by streets but by junctions.
I dare call it the Republic of Junctions
Jos Junction.
Ayappankavu.
Pallimukku.
Maharaja‘s junction
Ravipuram.
Thevara Junction.
Pullepady.
South Junction.
North Junction.
Menaka.
Padma Junction.
Convent Junction.
And assorted other junctions whose principal purpose seemed to be ensuring that no Cochin journey could ever be described in a straight line.
Directions were conversational.
“Go straight.”
“Until?”
“Until the junction.”
“Which junction?”
“The junction after the other junction.”
Google Maps would have resigned.
Then came our own pop culture - The Hijackers
Cochin had bands.
Real bands.
One I remember vividly was The Hijackers.
Jayan on the mike.
Vishwanathan, son of Krishnaji, on drums.
Hari, son of Dr Rajalakshmi, on bass guitar.
They were young, fashionable and becoming popular.
Remember: there were no mobile phones.
No Instagram.
No Sportify
No YouTube subscribers.
No Auto-Tune.
No influencer marketing.
No one could become famous because fourteen million people watched him brush his teeth.
You either had talent or you didn’t.
If you played badly, the audience knew immediately.
If you sang badly, your friends informed you even faster.
There was something wonderfully honest about growing up then.
Talent was genuine.
Friendships were physical rather than digital.
Life was comparatively uncomplicated.
The difficult part was returning home.
Because Appa subscribed enthusiastically to the prevailing theory of adolescent behavioural science:
Spare the rod and spoil the brat.
The parental belt was the analogue predecessor of today’s parental-control software.
It required no password.
And unlike modern apps, it never crashed.
Let me turn to the Girls of Cochin
The girls of Cochin were special — beautiful, stylish, intelligent and, to adolescent boys, inhabitants of a mysterious superior civilisation.
Among them I particularly remember one legendary figure we called Poocha Kanni — the cat-eyed girl.
She had extraordinary green eyes.
Not slightly green.
Not metaphorically green.
Green.
She stood out among the Cochin girls as though nature had accidentally imported the wrong pair of eyes.
We developed various adolescent anthropological theories about her ancestry, none supported by evidence and all delivered with total confidence.
Romanian gypsy?
Konkani?
Malayali?
Some magnificent unexplained combination?
Who knew?
She was also, as I remember it, among the first young women we saw confidently riding a scooter around Cochin.
That alone was revolutionary.
Half the boys in Cochin were allegedly in love with her.
The other half were positioned strategically along her anticipated scooter route pretending they were waiting for a bus.
Some of those boys missed several buses.
Now comes Cochin’s Own Rajesh Khanna
No recollection of those years would be complete without Carlton Lewis of Fort Cochin.
Carlton was Cochin’s answer to Rajesh Khanna.
Or, more accurately, Carlton believed Rajesh Khanna was Bombay’s answer to Carlton Lewis.
Bell-bottom trousers.
Carefully arranged hair.
Dark glasses.
Facial preparation sufficient for Technicolor.
He walked Broadway as though a tracking camera were permanently following him.
Even during the monsoon he wore sunglasses.
The sun might have disappeared for six weeks.
Carlton remained prepared for its sudden return.
Children stared.
Adults stared.
Shopkeepers stared.
Carlton interpreted all staring as fan recognition.
He could have passed for a remnant of the Raj — a burra sahib with native modifications.
And then there was St Teresa’s.
Carlton was frequently observed in its general gravitational field, humming Roop Tera Mastana with the confidence of a man expecting the college gates to open and the entire student body to faint.
Sadly, contemporary evidence suggests that the anticipated mass fainting never occurred.
Eventually we heard that Carlton had departed for Bombay to seek opportunities in cinema.
This made perfect sense.
Rajesh Khanna was there.
Carlton was coming.
Bombay was clearly not large enough for both.
Then came reports that our hero had discovered the horrifying truth.
Bombay already contained several Rajesh Khanna lookalikes.
Competition was severe.
Legend has it that during one expedition on a crowded Bombay suburban train, Carlton’s sacred dark glasses fell onto the platform.
This was not loss of eyewear.
This was loss of identity.
He rushed after them, boarded, panicked, pulled the emergency chain with the dramatic force of a man stopping the Frontier Mail — and apparently created enough confusion to provide Bombay suburban transport with an unscheduled comic intermission.
The versions of the story grew with every retelling.
The fine became larger.
The fall became more spectacular.
The chain eventually broke.
By the time the story reached Cochin, Indian Railways had suffered a quarterly loss.
For some months Carlton disappeared from our radar.
Rajesh Khanna’s position at the top of Hindi cinema remained secure.
I cannot forget to mention Ernakulam Law College.
Here’s where Jurisprudence Meets St Teresa’s
The Government Law College was another institution woven into our family and the city.
My father had been a law rank-holder there in the early 1950s.
By the 1970s, however, the strategic geographical relationship between Law College and St Teresa’s College occasionally seemed to generate extracurricular interpretations of legal education.
Criminal law could be studied theoretically.
Or experimentally.
The law of torts could be demonstrated.
Evidence could be collected.
And the Transfer of Property Act acquired entirely new meanings near the gates of St Teresa’s.
The distinguished alumni of the college eventually included Mammootty, who earned his LL.B. there before practising law and becoming one of India’s great film stars.
Law College folklore, meanwhile, contained stories of outrageous bets and spectacular student escapades — including one immortal tale about him accepting a challenge to run stark naked through Broadway in central Ernakulam in a state inconsistent with both the Penal Code and accepted standards of tailoring.
He was rightly arrested for indecent exposure under the penal laws but that catapulted him to Mollywood. instantaneously.
Every generation attached different names to the protagonist.
I shall not.
The evidentiary chain is hopeless.
As my father would have reminded me:
Destination is important but how you get there is even more important.
But that never prevented Cochin from improving a good story.
The Marwari Thali That Defeated Me
My schoolmate Sreekumar Murarka was a magnificent big talker.
It was at his home that I encountered my first grand Marwari thali.
His mother had specially prepared it.
What a meal!
Silver thali.
Little silver bowls.
Course after course.
Everything seemed to contain ghee.
Some things floated in ghee.
Other things appeared to have been conceived in ghee, educated in ghee and finally cremated in ghee.
My South Indian metabolism convened an emergency meeting.
The liver objected.
The pancreas requested clarification.
The digestive system demanded adjournment.
But I persevered.
Then came dessert.
And finally paan, Marwari style.
I innocently put it into my mouth and chewed.
Within seconds the room altered its constitutional position.
The walls moved.
The ceiling approached.
My knees resigned.
And I was literally floored.
Need I say more?
That afternoon permanently cured me of the belief that vegetarian food is necessarily light.
Regie Paul — The Boy Who Collected Proficiency Prizes
Then there was Regie Paul.
One of the brightest boys I have ever known.
Correction.
At the time I was convinced he was THE brightest child on Planet Earth.
We were together from Class IV to Class XI.
Every year there was a proficiency prize.
Every year Regie collected it.
Every year I applauded.
Consistency is an admirable quality, particularly when somebody else is demonstrating it.
But Regie was also one of my closest friends.
Combined study at his home — especially mathematics — remains a cherished memory.
He had patience.
He could explain.
He never made you feel foolish for not understanding something.
His father and mother, both teachers, were extraordinarily warm and caring hosts.
There are teachers who teach subjects.
And there are families who teach you the value of learning.
Regie’s family did the latter.
Ram, Perry Mason and the Seventy-Five-Paise University
And then my pal Ramaswami.
Another extremely bright bulb.
Ram introduced me to Perry Mason, James Hadley Chase, Alistair MacLean and Ayn Rand.
Our favourite technique was sophisticated.
Place forbidden novel inside prescribed textbook.
Maintain serious facial expression.
Occasionally turn page.
If teacher approaches, look intellectually exhausted.
We believed this operation was undetectable.
Teachers probably knew from the beginning and concluded that at least we were reading something.
Occasionally Ram and I cut classes for the afternoon matinee.
Our economic class permitted the 75-paise front row.
This meant sitting approximately six feet from a screen the size of a government building.
For three hours our heads remained tilted backwards at an angle normally associated with astronomical observation.
We entered the cinema as delinquents.
We emerged with cervical injuries.
I invariably got caught at home.
Sometimes because my shirt smelled of somebody else’s cigarettes.
Sometimes because of my suspiciously cinematic timetable.
And occasionally because I committed the forensic error of leaving the ticket counterfoil in my pocket.
Sherlock Holmes was unnecessary.
My mother had laundry.
Ram and I were thick as thieves.
We collaborated in mischief large and small.
And I remain convinced that growing up means trying things, making mistakes, learning, laughing — and eventually understanding that there is simply no substitute for hard work.
Brilliant Ram could easily have disappeared into the great Indian Babudom.
Instead he built an exceptional career with the Reserve Bank of India, retiring honourably as a highly respected senior official.
The boy hiding Perry Mason inside a textbook eventually joined the institution guarding India’s money.
There is hope for every delinquent.
Mr Bombastic
Then came Jacob Paul.
My classmate.
My friend.
Tall.
Chubby.
Thorough gentleman.
School leader.
And magnificently expressive.
Mr Bombastic.
Jacob possessed the sort of personality Shakespeare would have enjoyed having around.
If Shakespeare had attended our school, Jacob would certainly have been cast.
Possibly in every role.
John John and Our Assault on Popular Music
And I cannot forget my late friend John John.
John played lead guitar when a group of us entered a school musical competition and performed the Bombay to Goa song.
We sang.
John played.
The audience survived.
And we won a consolation prize.
I have always regarded this as an extraordinary achievement.
A consolation prize is society’s elegant way of saying:
“We admire your courage. Please don’t do it again.”
But we were delighted.
For that afternoon we were the Beatles of Cochin.
John’s guitar was George Harrison.
The school stage was Wembley.
And the consolation prize was our Grammy.
The City That Raised Us
That was our Cochin.
Not Kochi.
Cochin.
A city of naval ships bars and cinemas, Naval officers and schoolboys, Broadway merchants and M.G. Road characters, Carnatic records and Western vinyl, bakeries and bookshops, scooters and Bullets, law students and film dreamers.
It was cosmopolitan without advertising itself as cosmopolitan.
We did not have smartphones.
We had friends.
We did not have Google.
We had Pai & Co.
We did not have Spotify.
We had Sudhan & The Hijackers
We did not have Instagram celebrities.
We had Carlton Lewis walking down Broadway.
We did not need wellness retreats.
We had Willingdon Island at sunset.
We did not have parental-control apps.
We had Appa’s belt.
We did not have online dating.
We had St Teresa’s gates.
We did not have GPS.
We had junctions.
We did not have risk-management consultants.
We jumped off Venduruthy Bridge.
And somehow we survived.
Perhaps that is what I remember most affectionately about growing up in Cochin.
Life had fewer conveniences but more texture.
We walked more.
We read more.
We talked more.
We laughed more.
We never got into trouble.
We never got caught.
But when we were - we got punished.
We went back and did something equally foolish the following week.
Friendship required presence.
Music required hunting.
Cinema required queuing.
Knowledge required reading.
And reputation could be destroyed before dinner because somebody’s uncle had seen you somewhere you had specifically told your mother you were not.
Cochin was our playground, our university and occasionally our juvenile court.
Today, when I cross the modern city and see Kochi transformed beyond recognition, I sometimes search beneath the Metro pillars, glass towers, traffic and illuminated storefronts for that older city.
And suddenly it returns.
The smell of the harbour.
A ship’s horn.
The evening breeze on Willingdon Island.
A Carnatic record turning in Appa’s house.
A Western LP arriving mysteriously at Sudhan’s.
The darkness inside Sridhar.
A book from Pai & Co.
The dug-dug-dug of a Bullet.
A green-eyed girl disappearing on a scooter.
Carlton Lewis adjusting his sunglasses in the rain.
Ram hiding a James Hadley Chase inside a textbook.
John John striking the first chord on his guitar.
Regie patiently explaining mathematics.
And three idiotic boys standing on Venduruthy Bridge, looking at the water below and deciding:
“Why not?”
We were young.
Cochin was young.
And neither of us had yet learned to be sensible.
Thank God.
