Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
For, an unpoisoned mind perishes too quickly (in today's world).
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the profound & thought-provoking post.
Not just in today's world, dear Indian Writer. Didn't Jesus advise people to have the cunning of serpents?
Deletekiss of life !! kiss of death !! A matter of perspective !!
ReplyDeleteLife and death, good and evil... poles merge, Aram, in the wider perspective.
DeleteReading this, I am reminded of Sylivia Plath's 'Kiss me and you shall see how important I am'.
ReplyDeleteVery few people were aware of the neurotic side of human life as Plath was. Thanks for bringing her here.
Deleteoh.. deadly! Reminds me of Jack the Ripper!
ReplyDeleteNot to such an extreme, Panchali. I was looking at the inevitable intermingling of good and evil in human life. Can innocence survive in the human world?
DeleteGood one...but as soon as I read the title, I could only think of Cadbury's jingle! :D Maybe it's time to have that ;)
ReplyDeleteYeah, you've just reminded me of the Cadbury ad.
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