Kochi

Kochi's harbour was created by a catastrophe: a great flood of the Periyar river in 1341 is traditionally said to have silted up the old port of Muziris to the north and opened the lagoon mouth here. A branch of the Chera line, the rajas of Kochi, established themselves nearby, and the port drew Arab, Chinese and Jewish traders to a coast that had sold pepper to the Mediterranean world since Roman times. Jewish communities had settled in the region far earlier, and Syrian Christians traced their church to the mission of St Thomas.

The Portuguese arrived in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral, and Afonso de Albuquerque built Fort Manuel in 1503, the first European fort in India; Vasco da Gama died in Kochi in 1524 and was buried in St Francis Church. The Dutch took the town from the Portuguese in 1663, destroyed many of its Catholic institutions, remodelled the palace at Mattancherry and traded spices for more than a century. The British took control in 1795, and Kochi became a princely state under their paramountcy. In 1936 the engineer Robert Bristow completed a deep-water harbour, dredging the channel and building Willingdon Island from the spoil.

The princely states of Kochi and Travancore merged in 1949, and Kerala was formed in 1956. The modern city was constituted in 1967 by combining Fort Kochi, Mattancherry and Ernakulam with the islands. Since then it has become Kerala's commercial capital, with the container terminal at Vallarpadam, an oil refinery at Ambalamugal, technology parks in the east, a metro opened in 2017, and, since 2012, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which turned the old godowns into galleries.

Few Indian cities wear their mixed inheritance so plainly. Within a short walk of each other stand a 16th-century synagogue, Portuguese and Dutch churches, Hindu temples and mosques, and the communities behind them — Syrian Christians, Latin Catholics, Muslims of long-established trading families, Konkani and Gujarati merchants, and the small remnant of the Cochin Jewish community, most of whom emigrated to Israel after 1948 — have shaped the city's manners, architecture and food.

The performing arts are taken seriously. Kathakali, the dance-drama in which stories from the epics are told through codified gesture and expression under heavy green and red make-up, is staged in shortened evening performances for visitors, and in full overnight form at temple festivals; Mohiniyattam, Koodiyattam and the martial art Kalaripayattu are all practised in the region. Temple festivals bring drum ensembles and caparisoned elephants onto the streets, and Christian feasts bring processions and fireworks.

Kerala's wider social character is visible in Kochi: very high literacy, strong trade unions, vigorous newspaper reading and political argument, and a long history of migration to the Gulf that sustains many families. The Biennale has added a contemporary art scene, with studios, galleries and cafés in old Mattancherry warehouses, while the fishing crews still work the shore nets a few hundred metres away.

About 680,000 people live within the corporation limits and more than two million in the wider urban area, which spreads along the mainland and the islands. The economy rests on the port and shipbuilding, oil refining and chemicals, tourism, information technology at Kakkanad and Infopark, health care, and the trade in spices, seafood, rubber and coir that has always passed through the harbour. Remittances from Keralites working in the Gulf remain a major source of income.

Geography dictates the rhythm. Commuters cross the water by ferry, bridge and now the water metro; the metro and the arterial roads fill twice a day; and fishing boats come in early to the harbour and the jetties on Vypin. Most residents live on the mainland, in Ernakulam and the suburbs spreading east, while Fort Kochi has become quieter and more expensive as houses turn into homestays and galleries.

The recurring problems are familiar for a coastal Indian city: flooding in heavy monsoons, most severely in the Kerala floods of 2018; waste disposal, after a fire at the Brahmapuram dump filled the city with smoke in 2023; coastal erosion and pressure on the backwaters; and traffic on a street plan constrained by water. Against that, the city has invested heavily in public transport and waterfront redevelopment.

Kochi eats fish. The everyday meal is rice with meen curry, in which the catch is simmered with chilli, turmeric, curry leaves and coconut and soured with kudampuli, the smoked rind of a local fruit; karimeen pollichathu, pearl-spot fish rubbed with masala and baked in a banana leaf, is the celebrated backwater dish. Prawns, mussels, squid and seer fish are fried in a red coating, and alongside the fishing nets at Fort Kochi stalls will cook a fish bought on the spot.

Breakfast is distinctive: appam, a lacy fermented rice pancake with a soft centre, eaten with coconut milk stew; puttu, steamed cylinders of ground rice and coconut, with black chickpea curry or banana; idiyappam string hoppers; and Kerala parotta, a layered flatbread, usually with beef or chicken curry later in the day. Onam brings the sadya, a vegetarian feast of many dishes served on a banana leaf, ending with payasam.

The city's communities add their own dishes — Syrian Christian duck roast and meen molee, Mappila biryani and pathiri flatbreads from Malabar, Jewish and Konkani traditions in Mattancherry — and the old spice trade is still visible in the sacks of pepper, cardamom, cloves and ginger on Bazaar Road. Toddy shops outside the city serve fermented palm sap with tapioca and fiery curries, tea shops sell strong milky chai with banana fritters, and filter coffee, tender coconut water and sambharam, spiced buttermilk, are the usual drinks.