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Kochi in focus

Kochi is my home city. I love Kochi. Marco Polo did. The Portuguese did. The English did. The Dutch did. But we Kochiites do not. But I love Kochi for its weird lifestyle. sometimes it is clean; sometimes it is not. Nowadays it is always unclean. Like the mindset of the inhabitants of Kochi, it is unclean always now.

Kochi is the international port city in South India along the western coast adjacent to the Arabian Sea. Vasco da Gama came that way to Kochi and claimed he discovered a sea route to India from Lisbon. In fact a recent Historical research shows Vasco da Gama only followed a Gujarati trader of spices from Africa to Kochi in his comparatively smaller ship. Weird. Isn't it?

I have never seen Mr. Gama nor that Gujarati trader who asked him to follow his big ship to Kochi to buy spices from here. But tell-tale evidences are here in Kochi where Gama lived, ate and slept while his small ship was moored in the backwaters in the natural port of Kochi.

Kochi, indeed was known as "The Queen of the Arabian Sea" then. I don't know anyone of the present times remember that poetic description of Kochi now.

Today Kochi is a bustling commercial metro of Kerala State. Perhaps one of the fast-developing metros like Mumbai or Delhi in India. It may outlive even Bangalore in a couple of years from now.

Kochi is the gateway to the only tropical state in India, Kerala. Kochi is human-friendly and simple. The cost of living is affordable but the cost of keeping the mosquitos away is prohibitive. About mosquitos I will tell you later.