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 .
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 .
1 comment:
thanks for a story that helps me understand how reality and imagination can give us different perspectives that could add to our understanding.
could you recommend any story sites that you like. your style is unique and i just wanted to know your choice.
thanks again.
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