HIGHLIGHT OF THE VISIT TO FORT COCHIN IN FEBRUARY 2016

The above photo says it all. The nonagenarian Jewess, Sarah Jacob Cohen, enjoying the attention she receives on a daily basis, aided and assisted by dutiful Taha on her right. Looking on is the best historian of Fort Cochin and Jews of Malabar, Thoufeek.
Sharing an afternoon with the three of them was a thing of beauty.
I wish them well, as I am about to take off to Colombo on my way west

EATING FOR ONE WEEK IN COCHIN IN INDIA

I am unashamedly fond of the little township of Fort Cochin but certainly not for its food. The quality of food in the tourist parts of Fort Cochin is just one notch down the quality ladder. Fort Cochin also does not feel like India. To feel India with its hustle and bustle and its populace you have to cross the waters to the city of Ernakulam, where coincidentally there are very many good restaurants which serve Kerala food. Kerala food is very difficult to obtain outside Kerala, perhaps one could get it occasionally in Singapore or Malaysia.
I was invited out every night during this stay in Fort Cochin and each night I crossed the gulf between my mind and India of Ernakulam. Tonight the last night of my stay I was invited to eat traditional Kerala food by a local foodie and we ended up at Dhe Puttu and I am glad that I will carry its memory as part of my eating experience in Cochin..

Tomorrow I am flying Etihad Airways to JFK via Abu Dhabi and I am certain that certain pleasures to tickle the tonsils await on that trip..
Adieu to Cochin for now
May the spirits bring me back soon enough..

FORT COCHIN A SUMPTUOUS FEAST FOR THE MIND BODY AND THE SOUL

FORT COCHIN   A SUMPTUOUS FEAST FOR THE MIND, BODY AND THE SOUL. ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY

My choices of places to stay at Fort Cochin are the Old Lighthouse Bristow Hotel which is arguably the best situated hotel in Fort Cochin facing the Arabian sea and the Niyati Boutique Hotel of my friend Joseph C. I have been staying at the Bristow since I arrived from France via Brussels few days ago. The manager Mr. Murugan and the Front desk manager Mr Prince have been more than congenial.

I wake up late, just in time before breakfast ends. There are lots of choices of European breakfast but I am partial to the south Indian specialties. This morning began with a local delicacy Uthappam, with sweet milky coffee, fruit platter. Days here have been long and dinners finishing late in the evening and the long drive back to Ft Cochin from Ernakulum, made convenient by Uber!

Soon after Thoufeek Zakariya, the Chef who now works at Taj Dubai arrives. He is an amateur historian, self-taught, but the best there is in the current climate of “tourist oriented shallow history” by necessity and also foreign fake journalism parading as history. For nearly three hours we discussed various innuendos of historical note of Fort Cochin with an emphasis on Jewish History and fascination with the Portuguese maritime expansion in Asia. Several points were under discussion, the possible Jewish donor of wood to the Chempita Mosque? The site of arrival of Jews after Spanish dispersion? The letter from Moses de Paiva who visited from Amsterdam? The rebirth of the Kadavumbagam synagogue in Ernakulum, the history of the destruction of the Black Jewish presence in Fort Cochin? We also touched upon Jewish connections to Fort Cochin from Yemen, cities of Mesopotamia as well as that of Abraham Ben Yiju, a Tunisian Jew who lived in Mangalore in 1248 CE.  I gave him a coin from Morocco with Star of David on it with 1289 AH written on it. I have to admire this man’s honesty, analysis of the researched facts and refusal to accept heresy and more importantly open mindedness in face of his personal pious conviction in Islam.

It was close to 2 pm when he left, I slowly walked towards the Princess street, crossing Napier street on to the parade ground, skirting St Francis church. Stopped at the IDIOM bookstore and chatted with the genial owner manager.

My destination was Walton’ Homestay, a very popular hostel with foreigners and friends of Mr. Christopher Walton whose family has owned this Dutch era building now housing his namesake homestay, much like a B and B. Fortunately for me, Mr. Walton was in his seat in the office

It is my lucky day, I greeted him, as I entered the office. I would label him a facilitator of knowledge and in the American Indian way, a Hollow Bone through which spiritual messages flow. Today’s conversation more than emphasized this designation of him. After the initial conversation about the history of his city (in a way mine too), our conversation took a deep plunge into spiritual topics. I can say without a doubt that this afternoon that I spent in the company of Mr. Walton was one of the most spiritual experiences for me. It transcended the normal level of communication, to a higher level where dwells feelings in the forms of spirit engaged thoughts and action. With his understanding of spirituality, not related to his adherent religion, Christianity or Hinduism of India, but one of a true universal nature, I was able to enter a world which I had not entered, hallucinatory with deep knowledge, a connection to an eternal future based on an endless past. It was an uplifting conversation, very gratifying and felt light headed at the gravity of the conversation.

Such a conversation took place in Fort Cochin is of special significance for me, as it binds me to this small pocket of land , isolated as it is from rest of Kerala and India but connected to unknown points across the ocean, on which it sits.

I walked back to the hotel, retracing my steps, along the Parade Ground. I kept my gaze on the ground as I was trying to fully comprehend what had happened at the office of Mr. Walton in Princess Street.

Soon afterwards, Mr. M and my Jewish colleague Mr. E arrived from Ernakulum. Earlier in the day, Thoufeek had fed my mind, afternoon saw my soul being filled by Mr. W.

The world of Mr. M completed the circle, made the day whole. He and I share ideas of travel, food, journeys and destinations. We talked about his educational projects in South Africa and he invited me to come with him on one of his monthly visits. I would like to learn more about his projects. He wanted me to taste typical syro-malabar Christian cuisine but none was easily available today. The Christians here are observant of Lent, thus we ended up in a pesco vegetarian restaurant, the Pavilion near Fort Cochin, where I had mahi in a delicious curry, okra in spicy fried coating, fish fingers to pick on. It was nice to see another aspect of the cultural history of this place.

Each night I have been invited out to dinner, last night it was Brindavan, a highly vegetarian restaurant; two consecutive dinners at the two clubs, The Lotus Club and The Yacht Club.

Mr. M promised me a syro-malabar Christian meal before I left. When I got back to the hotel I booked my connecting flight on Sri Lankan airways to Colombo to connect with Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi and then to New York, where I would connect with a flight to Miami. I look forward to my family and some dear friends in Miami before moving on to the American Indians especially the UmonHon.

I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR A DAY LIKE TODAY
GRATEFUL FOR THIS WORLD FULL OF PEOPLE LIKE THOSE WHO SHARED THEIR TIME WITH ME TODAY

JOURNEY IS AS IMPORTANT AS THE DESTINATION

Lately, the emphasis has shifted from the journey to destination in the world of Travel. One of the frequently asked questioned in Travel Forums is: How can I get there cheaply. 
That immediately puts a brake on your journey and if you apply the same mentality to your destination, the pleasure would be halved as well.
To me, getting there is an important part of my travels, and that gives me ample opportunities for interactions on the road with every day people who make my journey more pleasant. They are not just faces but names and histories and over the years I have had pleasant times with agents at airport and car rental people, waiters, Flight attendants, and many many good people who serve us.
Here is a short photo summary of my last trip which began yesterday and finished this morning. I thank all the people involved in making the journey from Bruxelles to Cochin a pleasant one.

PHYSICIAN ANTHROPOLOGIST AND THE ARTIST: YOU MEET THOSE YOU NEED TO MEET

DOCTOR AND THE ARTIST

YOU MEET THOSE YOU NEED TO MEET

Stop looking for them! admonished my Meskwakia teacher,

“dr” Brown. You don’t need to search, they will cross your path.

One such encounter happened today at the Children’s park in Fort Cochin, a city steeped in memories of the past colonial empires and flimsy futuristic ambitions of the fluttering imitators of the west.

That memory is now being kept alive by just a few individuals, most of whom I have met, and was waiting to meet the star of the show, a sous chef who had gone to Taj Hotel Dubai from his native soil of Fort Cochin

Mr. Thoufeek Zakariya

I had arrived at the same morning after an exhaustive trip at the Cochin International Airport to the tumult of the dizzying colours of expectant family members for their dear ones to arrive from their Gulf Destinations. There was an eerie silence which I later realized was due to the general strike, forcing all transports off the roads and all enterprises shut. I was fortunate enough to get one of the few taxis at the airport and was happy to plonk myself on bed at the Hotel an hour or two later.

As the evening set in, and the atmosphere of this once prominent trading town now buoyant with the chirping voices of the family reunions on the beach, I walked along the familiar streets, retracing some steps, greeting some old acquaintances along the tourist street, full of things tourist streets have all over the world.

I was in front of the children’s park, facing Koder House on the other side, when someone came up to me and said, Dr Yehuda? Yes and he said: I am Thoufeek

Casualidad no es tan casual we say in Cuba and the Indians would say things happen for a reason.  Grateful for this coincidence, he is here in town for a weeks respite from his work in Dubai to attend to family matters and was on his way to inspect some building of which he had seen an old photograph from 1889, It so happened we were standing right in front of the site where the ancient church once stood and the landmarks from the photograph from which the main building is missing can still be elucidated.

You couldn’t imagine how delighted I was at this encounter and the next few hours were filled with various topics, mostly dealing with history, to clear some of the doubts we had been entertaining, such as the Yemeni rather than European origin of the fair skinned Jews of Cochin, most of whom are dead and gone; the origin of racism among the Jews of Cochin against their darker skinned coreligionists, among others. Our mutual friend Taha who is single handedly responsible for the welfare of the last elderly Jew of Jew Town, Sarah Cohen, joined us and we were like excited school children discovering a tasty dessert as we sat at Kashi Café looking and comparing various pictures of the erstwhile church which was moved and later to become Santa Cruz Basilica.

 We talked not only about the Jewish history but also the illustrious history of Islam along these shores, the wonderful book of Patricia Fels on Cochin Mosques and went off to look for the interesting tome of the history of the Dutch in Cochin. Perusing through ancient maps in the book, we were able to solve the mystery, much to the excitement of all of us that the building erroneously assigned to be the lighthouse was actually the remnants of the church. As usual in such discussions, the situation in the Gulf Countries, their imported labour and their glorious historical past as traders and merchants all came for a review. Not to mention a favourable mention of my favourite country in the Gulf, Oman. How can we talk if we didn’t talk about Zheng He/Cheng Ho?

Thoufeek Zakariya is an erudite historian, almost entirely self-taught and has no equals in Fort Cochin. Lately to accommodate the rising tourist trade, there has been self-appointed guardians of local history who are way off mark (with notable exceptions of course) and also a plethora of extremely self-interested foreign journalists who see who see in Fort Cochin a ripe fruit to pick up without doing much background studies or work, thus on their first or third day of visit, they begin sprouting articles and blogs to misinform the world and undo the good work of the few illustrious historians such as Thoufeek.

He is a humble man, a pious Moslem but not a pedantic one, as he would say, anti-Semitism among Moslems arise out of ignorance about Jews. You realize when you talk to him that here is a man who has done his research in a methodical, analytical fashion, not easily given to conjectures and propositions

An impressive person, a Ft Cochin personality in the making, good friend and a reliable academically oriented historian, we can expect a lot from him, to unearth various treasures of this forgotten corner of a historic port.

MICROBIOME TELLS YOU WHAT YOU ARE AND EAT ACCORDINGLY

Microbiome as a word had not been coined, when I became aware of something mysterious in the workings of our food and body. Being a student at that time, my interest was from a cultural and quotidian point of view. I even coined the word, Genetic food, even though I am sure people had used it before.

When we moved to Australia from Asia, the food consumed was the general fare of Australia; and being in an Eastern European Jewish milieu, a lot of food of the Ashkenazi Jews. I began noticing that certain food gave my body pleasure but many others didn’t please it. I was not sure about my ancestral diet but Greek food was freely available and my body seemed to like it. All these long before Mediterranean Diet became popular.

MICROBIOME

I felt that people must eat or imitate their ancestral diet to the best of their abilities, as Australia and USA were my background countries I was familiar with. When I completed my Endocrinology studies, I was immensely dissatisfied to learn that just medical knowledge alone was not going to help people in the greater scheme of things I envisioned. Further education in Anthropology was an eye opener as the vista enlarged of the human condition. Anthropology taught me to question, ask the question WHY rather than accept the common wisdom of WHAT so prevalent in Medical Practice.

Even as a medical student I had questioned WHY that is the British immigrants to New Zealand had a higher rate of Peptic Ulcer Disease than the native NZ population?

Before Interleukin-6 measurements, my thoughts were in the direction of Inflammation in the body, rather than the epidemiological, things which can be measured, explanation of the association. Also I realized that epidemiology cannot explain the individual’s susceptibility using what makes a group sick. The probability of an overweight patient developing diabetes, had less to do with the commonly accepted epidemiological roots, but rather than the individuality of something in his body. On the third day after the drastic surgery of Gastric Bypass in obese patients, even before a loss of weight could occur, Diabetes may disappear altogether. (Now touted as the cure for type 2 Diabetes). If you accepted that the disease of DM type 2 was due to pancreatic exhaustion and thus irreversible, how come in a very large proportion of patients with type 2 DM, the disease does disappear, with reinstitution of Insulin secretion?

I remember my colleagues making fun of me about 10 years ago when I mentioned to them that the High Cholesterol so prevalent in the population is due to inflammation in the body, rather than enzymatic mal-wiring.

It now seems that Microbiome, the 100 trillion strong mostly bacterial inhabitants of our body, is very important in deciding what disease we may become susceptible to, and in some cases, as our understanding increases, will even help heal the disease.

Rob Knight’s recently published talk on TED, is good to whet your appetite about this fascinating field

https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_knight_how_our_microbes_make_us_who_we_are

This is my understanding of why there is so much cholesterol elevation and treated, why the rate of obesity has risen to catastrophic proportions..

Our microbiomes define who we are metabolically. You look like the way you do because your mother and father. In the same way the microbiomes decide what you are, metabolically. The grand difference is that Microbial DNA has only about 10 % similarity with another, whereas the human genome may have 99% similarity.

That is why the diet does not work, because 90 per cent of the people prescribed the diet, are rejecting or unsuitable for the diet. The Israeli scientists have come up with a personalized diet which takes into account YOUR microbiome and not what the food does to someone else, but how the food will react with the microbiome of someone else.

(My sister cooks the best Genetic Food

Even though I have lived the major portion of my life in Australia and USA (plus four European, two Caribbean), the microbial origins are none of the above. I prefer Bananas to Apples; Hamburger is not an appealing food, I am always drawn to Asian food (including what I consider to be my Genetic Food). You may try to explain this as cultural or natural (Jack Goody might have explained Cultural and Natural are not the same). Ayurvedic physicians prescribe food according to the Dosha, the physiognomy and other characteristics, much closer to the truth that the allopathic physicians who unfortunately have only “broad spectrum” medications and dietary recommendations. As one of my teachers remarked, it is like using a Machine Gun to kill a fly!

Any day I prefer to eat Hummus/Baba Ganoush/foul madames/kibbe/chanklish/meshe/ with whole grain pita bread with olive oil and zatar on it.

(eating in Bangkok with Pak Joe and Pak Lim)

I like Roti Canai and Teh tahrek

Bun Ga xao in Vietnam or Bun Bo Hue

Sundanese food agrees with me, Thai cooking is appealing.

I am sure I am pleasing my microbiota, so that they are happy and not angry and producing inflammatory molecules, that may give me insulin resistance even if I am not overweight, some form of heart disease to boot. Now we also know that the microbiota can combine with certain physical disorders such as chronic kidney failure to affect cognition.

 (Padang Food, Bogor in Indonesia)

(Food in Cambodia)

Michael Pollan is a well-respected advisor to the American Public and has written many easily readable books about Nutrition in America (or shall we say Bad Food in America, No one would criticize a nice pasta from Prima Pasta in North Miami Beach? Would they?) Map of his microbiota is available on line and you can see that he is practicing what he preaches to the welfare of his microbiome.

So, this afternoon, I shall have a spanakopita and Chai!

Bon apetite, mes amis Les Microbiomes!

There is one particular type of cuisine, not a generic one but a varied one which I am not sure pleases my MicroBiome
It is the food served on Airlines and their Lounges

MY LIFE OF FEAST AND FAMINE.. HAVANA IS THE MOVABLE FEAST..MIAMI INDIAN COUNTRY COCHIN FOR VARIOUS REASONS

I always look forward to going back to La Havana. Unbridled affections the chance to be yourself and spontaneous. I understand fully when a friend of mine, on his visit from America said to me: In Cuba, I feel free. For Intellectuals and Emotional people, Cuba is a paradise and the feast?  the friends. I am convinced that nowhere in the world one can make friends as easily as one can in Cuba. Love,affections and respect all flow. My life in Cuba is divided into Academic, where I try to impart some knowledge about the Anthropological view that I have about Life and Health; the second is the chance to spend time (my friends also have the time, the greatest gift) with my good friends of many years.

My life has followed a pattern of feast and famine; the feast of Havana is usually followed by a famine of affections, lack of intellectual stimulation; then the pattern is back, more feast, this time it would be Cochin; another time it would be Kuala Lumpur.
Academically this has been a good year so far; Spiritually I am lucky to have Indians and their counsel; I am never depressed in Miami (friends make sure the food is delicate and excellent). I was hoping to do some explorations in Colombia and Brasil, but till the situation with Zika virus becomes clear, that has to be on hold.

as the day of friendship approaches, my thoughts are with my dear friends in Cuba.
Cuba, I count the days until I can return and Europe, I count the days until I can leave. I wont be going to the Indians this month as my body will not adjust to the cold weather, instead warm climes beckon.
and there is always Qatar airways to lift your spirits: I have four flights coming up with them!