LAST JEW OF COCHIN

Solomon was dying 
it was early in the morning in the relief centre 
Solomons eyes were closed but he saw his messiah his white mane flowing in the wind and the etched features .

The  long silver beard thick and curled ,   tall and muscular  arms outstretched he could clearly see the saviour of Jews leading into the deep blue thundering sea

The waves were huge and crashing the coast dipped deep into the sea  as  lightening flashed and heavy rain lashed

Nothing deterred them now as they followed their chosen one who led them with no fear  into the deep sea

Faith removes fear

The thundering hooves of the Egyptians were heard closely now as they followed in haste

 Moses stopped with his raised hands looked at the dark sky and hailed his lord to save his people

His cries were sepulchral and reached the skies

The dark clouds erupted into roaring rains

The sky turned blood red and dark and foreboding

and the  deep sea parted its way

Moses  strove forwards descending into the deep ocean

the waters were towering on the sides like glass waterfalls glistening and hurtling  but not making one of them wet as they followed him into the deep waters ,

Huge fish could be seen on the sides like an aquarium

Ships stood like figurines in glass

The sea remained  parted till every Jew was on the other side and as the Egyptians  in their horses followed them it crashed on them

It  sunk them like match boxes their huge chariots led by white steeds fumbled and sunk with no trace as hordes of Egyptians and their pharaoh were lost into the ocean and snuffed out of existence

It was all quiet

Solomon was dead

The last Jew in Cochin had left the world

The relief home was sombre in its silence

it was dawn and the inmates were slowly waking up into another day of destituteness ,

a few looked at Solomon as he lay there  with a beatific smile on his face

the smile on seeing his  saviour at last .

he had been in the centre  for the last decade

Age had caught up on Solomon and the lonely existence in the deserted synagogue  was denied to him

He had persisted to stay there even when his people had left one by one to the Promised Land

To Israel where their saviour had led them from the chasing pharaohs and his soldiers it was eons after which Israel as a state could come into existence

Solomon was an young man when Hitler exterminated Jews like rats gassing them in multitudes in the most horrible holocaust and racial snuffing the world had ever seen

Jews anywhere in the world had always been persecuted as Hitler .drove them out of Europe

 Those with skills could manage to reach the shores of the US of A where they made a mark and became a powerful community

But during all this the Jews in Cochin were never in trouble

 They had always been treated like they were part of the land

And how they were

Many could speak Malayalam well and they knew all the local customs

They were good business men and were prosperous

But they never abandoned their faith or their traditions

To them their community was above all their language their customs their holy books their God and their synagogue were above anything else

They never married outside the community and maintained purity of their race

They were very particular on this

It was long long back when  a group of Jews had migrated from Europe fearing the persecution of the Spanish

They had met the maharaja of Cochin and asked him refuge

The maharaja asked for a glass of milk to be brought to him

He took some small pebbles and put it in the milk

He looked at the Jewish leader and said  “you would be like the pebbles here and can never be part of us “

The Jewish leader was wise he asked for another glass of milk and some sugar he stirred the sugar in the milk and gave it to the maharaja and said

“Your highness we would melt like sugar in this milk and make it only sweeter  “.

The Maharaja was impressed

He gave them a large piece of land and allowed them to carry on their business in peace and practice their religion with total freedom

Probably India and Kerala were the only place where Jews were not persecuted

And thus the Jewish community in Cochin grew around the synagogue.

Solomon was the fourth child of Yehuda and pearl

His dad was a tombstone maker

Strange job but he was in it from childhood as an apprentice slowly learning the art of creating tombstones with their epitaphs and most of the tombstones that adorned the Jewish cemetery were made by him

He was a busy man too as young and old died in the community making it smaller and smaller over time

He too left early and an epitaph went up over his tomb which said

“Here lies Yehuda the one who wrote for the dead” ,

And some Hebrew hieroglyphics

Alas he too was gone.

Solomon was just a child when it happened,

He had seen his dad bending over the stones in the cemetery working in pouring rain or hot suns,

He used to tag alone as he liked the quite of the cemetery

People rarely came there even though it was just off the Jewish settlement

They came there only when dead or with the dead

But for Solomon it was a dear place a place where he felt his dad’s presence

With time he could hardly remember his dad

 His face had faded away but he could still feel his presence as a wispy memory

He could see the knurled hands as they worked the clicking sounds as he chipped away the stones and cleared the weeds

It was his mother he remembered well for she died when he was in his sixties by then she was eighty two and was just planning to fly to Israel when it happened.

All his brothers and sisters all eight of them had flown one by one and settled down in Tel Aviv and so many other places

 They wrote back tales of the Promised Land asking him to join them but Solomon knew in his heart he would never leave his Cochin

He would never leave his tombstones where he could feel his dad in the stones

 During the monsoon it rained for days in Cochin

The incessant downpours would hammer into the tombstones creating strange sounds

He would sit under one of the awnings listening to its fall as it was music to him

He would light an occasional cigarette cupping his hands to prevent the match from going off in the gusts of the rain

During rains the electric current would often go off and Solomon would sit in the dark hooded and bearded and the people found him strange

It was then he would think of her

She was always in his mind all the time day and night

But she would become alive in such lonely moments

He would hear the tinkle of her anklets in the dark

He could smell the jasmine adorning her black hair

He could see the colour of the jacket and skirt she wore

He felt happy to see her almond eyes looking at him fleetingly

Solomon too then had lovely blue eyes with brown freckles

He was a handsome man in his youth  

He was then working in Deborah’s shop

Deborah and Benjamin were the richest in the community

They owned many shops but the one where Solomon worked was their earliest   started with the money  Benjamin had got as a present from Deborah’s dad who was working in Malaysia in an estate  and was reasonably rich ,

Benjamin had started it as an all-purpose shop and it had flourished

Young Solomon was one of the many who worked there

The Jews in Cochin always had a closeness to their own

The shop was near pazhayarakavu  Bagavathy temple

The Devi temple was housed in the Dutch palace

Cochin is one place with history every where

All one needed was to scratch it anywhere and rich lore’s would start flowing like a river

Over the years Cochin had the Dutch the Portuguese and the British ruling its pockets

The maharaja too had his fiefdom

The Dutch had given away the palace to the maharaja as a gift and he had made a temple in it

This was where Solomon first saw her

His Lakshmi

She came from the Brahmana samooham in Mattancherry a colony of houses with many Brahmin households speaking a mixture of Malayalam and Tamil.

The Brahmins of Cochin added to its variety

They had their own small temple inside but still the girls would come to pazhayarakavil in the evenings adorned with jasmine flowers their anklets twinkling

They were pretty and most of them knew classical singing and dancing and hence walked with grace

Lakshmi was the only daughter of Kailas Iyer and Mani mammi

 To Kailas Iyer and his wife mammi   Lakshmi was everything

Kailas Iyer was the manager of the cooperative Bank

Lakshmi  was the most good looking girl in the colony and many young men  in the neighbourhood looked at here with a sigh

Solomon too fell for her the day he saw her

On that day she had come to the temple with her friends walking daintily  lifting her skirt as the road was wet after the rains

He couldn’t take his eyes off her

It happens that if there are intense feelings to someone it is felt unseen by the person.

Suddenly Lakshmi looked back as she had an uncanny feel that someone was looking at her

And she looked into the brown flecked blue eyes of the Jew

Their eyes locked for a  second before she willingly looked elsewhere but Solomon knew she had noticed him

He felt happy and did not know why

By then he heard Deborah calling him and he went away

But he looked out for Lakshmi since that day

His mother asked him to continue his studies and go to college so that he would get a good job in Israel as there was no doubt that sooner or later they would go there but Solomon was never good at studies he was not good in his father’s job too

He managed to do his job in the shop and was happy about that

Finally his mother too stopped telling him

His eldest brother David would call him a wastrel but his sister in law Sarah was kind to him and would protect him from David’s hard words

 it was to Sarah he would tell all is secrets and his problems

And it was to Sarah he told of how he had fallen for a Brahmin girl!

By now Lakshmi too had started searching for Solomon when she came to the temple they looked at each other with a gentle smile

During the festival in the temple Solomon managed to go near her in the crowd and pass a letter to her

He had pored over it for days and wrote it with great heartache and he felt happy that Lakshmi took it from him he never expected a reply but the next day Suppini the slightly hare brained boy in the Brahmins colony walked into his shop and handed over a letter from Lakshmi he was stunned

He rushed inside the small store room and opened it to read it

His Lakshmi had written that she too liked him but felt they had no future as her dad would never allow her to marry a Jewish boy so better to forget things earlier and carry on

She was a realist but Solomon would not take this as an answer

He was going to get his Lakshmi whatever

Years rolled on with their furtive glances graduating to hurried whispers under dusky corridors in the Dutch palace where Solomon would declare his unparalleled love to his girl

By then David had found a Jewish lass for Solomon and was planning to arrange their wedding

Leora was studying in college but liked Solomon and had agreed for the match.

Solomon knew her well as they had all played together as children

She was a nice girl cute to look at but not for being his wife

To him that could be only Lakshmi

He met Leora near her college one day and told the truth of his love for Lakshmi

Leora laughed a bit sad initially but promised she would tell her father that she was not happy on getting married to Solomon on some pretext

she knew her dad would agree for anything and they were also in the verge of travelling to Israel so it really wouldn’t matter much as her choice there would be wider .

David was furious at the turn of events and looked at Solomon with suspicion he knew his brother had an eye for an Indian girl

Sarah who knew all just kept her secret

Time was passing and Laxmis dad had started looking for a match for her

It would be now or never

Solomon was ready to run away with her but she wanted nothing of the sort

Solomon dared to do the unbelievable

He strode straight into Lakshmi’s house one day and met her dad

Kailas Iyer was reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee in a steel glass and the radio was belting out a Carnatic classical when he knocked the door

“Yes what can I do for you? “

asked Kailas Iyer as he opened the door

“Aren’t you working in Deborah’s shop?

 Iyer had seen the boy there .

“Yes sir I am “

 “Ok anything you want to tell?

He stood like a rock and Solomon was not called inside

“May I sit sir? “

Kailas Iyer did not like the tone

“Ok sit in the veranda “saying this he offered a chair to the visitor and he himself sat on an easy reclining chair

Yes

Well sir Iam a Jew living near the synagogue and my name is Solomon

I know I know Kailas Iyer was a bit impatient

He prided himself in knowing most of the people in and around the area

“I knew your dad he was the one who  made those tombstones right ?

 died years back I remember  “

Yes sir

“Ok  what brings  you here now “

“Sir, Lakshmi “

“Lakshmi!  what about Lakshmi  “

Kailas Iyer found it strange this fellow could name his daughter in a conversation

“What does Lakshmi have to do with you? “

“Lakshmi your daughter “

“Of course Lakshmi is my daughter……. What? “

“Well sir I like her, can I marry her  ? “

Kailas Iyer sat like a stone

It was unbelievable

This this Jew fellow could come up to him and ask for his daughter just like that

He was shocked and stunned at the audacity

“Get up

Get out

Before I go mad

What do you think you are

How dare you ask for Lakshmi’s hand?

Get lost “

 “Sir don’t get angry

I can look after her well

My passage to Israel is assured and as my wife she will come along we will lead a happier life

 Abroad “.

“You go to Israel or Nigeria for all I care “

“You thought I will give my daughter because you can take her to Israel you idiot I will kill you

get out now how dare you could ask me the question  “

Solomon was angry now

“Sir I did no wrong Lakshmi too likes me ask her if you want  

I just asked for her hand like a man “

“Well I don’t want some shop attendants coming here asking for my only daughters hand

So off “

By now kailas Iyers neighbours had smelt trouble and had slowly come there

“What’s the  problem Kailas a  ? “

“This fellow wants to marry my Lakshmi it seems he will take her to Israel “

 “No wonder these Jews were driven off from everywhere “this from a rotund neighbour

Solomon drew himself tall

“Don’t you curse us Jews

We are  brave people and the best

If you don’t want to give your daughter so be it but if you touch on my community I would become a different person “

“Look look he is threatening us now get out or I will call the police  

He could hear Lakshmi whimpering inside “

She knew it would end up like this

Solomon had tried to meet her and tell her that they could run away but kailas Iyer had his hawk eyes on him

He also put in a word to David and Benjamin who had taken loans from his bank and Solomon was strictly told to lay off Lakshmi .

One fine day Lakshmi had got married and gone off leaving a giant vacuum in his heart

Solomon turned dour and mostly never smiled

His age was catching up he was in his late forties

He moved into the synagogue as its caretaker and would sit long hours in the evening in the cemetery thinking of his Lakshmi

He heard she was now in Bombay in Matunga where most of the Iyers lived married to what else another banker and she had two children too

The Jewish Romeo still pined for her

His mother had stopped asking him to get married

She knew it would never happen

David and Sarah and all the others had left to Israel

And his mother had died just before she could leave

She never was very keen and was happy to be with Solomon but David wanted her there

Having   a senior citizen in the house could get a   lot of advantages for the whole family in Israel

But the day she was to leave his mother too died of a broken heart

Solomon was truly alone now

More than sixty years he had aged and looked different from the blue eyed boy he was earlier

Kailas iyer had died and Solomon had even gone to the house hoping to get a glimpse of his Lakshmi he saw her with her greying hairs in distress crying over her dad

Her feelings for the Jewish boy had all disappeared as an infatuation.

But to Solomon it would never go

To the people around he was like a relic

Once The local daily published an article on the last Jew which made him popular

Tourists would ask for taking photographs with him and he would get paid

He lived like this

The synagogue too was becoming old and faded

The government maintained it now as a heritage property

Newly appointed clerks collected ticket money for seeing the place and a lot of tourists visited it

There were numerous handicrafts shops strewn around the synagogue

Solomon was in his late seventies and was officially jobless but was allowed to stay in a small alcove in the synagogue

One day he became sick and was admitted in the local government hospital

Solomon had a stroke and had right sided weakness he could no longer walk by his own

Hence his food became a problem as he could not walk to the small tea shops where he had his food

The police one day shifted him to the relief centre full of beggars and destitute

His last days as a Jew in Cochin would end there

And finally the day had come a

  Moses the messiah  who took him at last to the promised land came to him  in his last dream

Thus This is the story of the last Jew in Cochin .

Note : having lived for more than two decades in Cochin I had always been fascinated on the Jewish settlement and their synagogue

his story sprung off purely on my imagination and has no relation to anyone who lived there or are still living there .