At a café, desperate for something cold to drink – the water was served at room temperature – I asked for a cold coffee with “lots of ice”. “Lots of ice-cream,” agreed the waiter, “okay, sir.” ‘Ice,” I pleaded with him, “not ice-cream,” drawing a blank look. “Do you have ice?” I persisted, drawing the attention of the café manager, who was able to put my mind to rest — yes, they did have ice, lots of it, indeed, but was I sure I wanted my cold coffee served cold?
New Delhi was wonderfully, crisply chilly when I flew out to Kochi. “It will be hot,” my wife had warned me, having a week previously returned from there, but I paid her little heed. Sure, Kerala would be warm, but this was still winter – right? – it could hardly be “hot”. Wrong. I should have paid heed, the high temperature being accompanied by intense humidity. God’s Own Country was incredibly, impossibly muggy, yet when you requested water, it would be served up warm. Ice? “So cold,” the waiter rebuked me when I emptied what seemed the contents of an entire pail of ice into my glass of juice, “it will make you ill.”
It didn’t make me ill, it made me lust for more ice, while all around people drank their beverages at temperatures that would have been all right if they’d wanted to brew tea, but not if they’d ordered, say, ginger-ale — or, like me, cold coffee. (That evening, just to check, I ordered a bottle of beer that at least was served chilled, restoring my faith in Kochi somewhat.)
It wasn’t just about ice. In taxis, drivers who kept the air-conditioner at the minimum turned to look at you if you dared suggest they might want to turn up the cooling. In restaurants and in stores, no one seemed to mind the heat and the humidity, rarely bothering even with fans. Too hot, did you say? “But it’s wonderful now, you must come in April when it gets a little hot,” I was reassured.
Yet, Kochi is no squalid town lacking in the mod-con department. All over Ernakulam and Mattancherry, high-rise apartments with wrap-around harbour and backwater views came with split- airconditioners and imported marble floors that had replaced the gentrified use of vitrified tiles more appropriate for the climate. In these luxury abodes, you could find more stacks of Noritake crockery than even the stores in Colombo from where it had been bought. Over Chivas and furniture that had probably just been offloaded off a ship from Dubai, conversations buzzed about holidays in Morocco and Marrakesh, or the latest cars, Kochi’s appetite being fed not by mere Beemers and Audis, but with possibly the highest sales in India of Jaguars. “You see,” explained somebody trying to make sense of it for me, “people who have their homes here” – okay, make that weekend homes – “want the same cars as they drive in Dubai.”
They might want everything and more that they’re used to in the Emirates, but it didn’t explain why they were oblivious to the heat, settling down for gossipy chats without bothering to turn on even a fan because – when you requested them – “it’s so comfortable these days, we open our windows and sleep with blankets”, they’d mention. That night, just for good measure, I made sure my hotel room was at sub- zero temperature as I wondered how the Jaguar-owning jeteratti had overlooked the simple fact that in Dubai they actually serve you your cold coffee cold.
