I felt the hand of Time as I walked through Bazaar Street in Fort Kochi yesterday. This three kilometer stretch that ends in Jew Town is packed with slices of Cochin’s mercantile history, which can be seen in its many ancient multi-storied warehouses. Some of the buildings display more recent time stamps from the 1900’s on their doorways but many still stand as silent storytellers from the 19th or 18th centuries. Men moved around with sacks of wares, merchants sat fanning themselves at the doorways to the warehouses that had bags of goods stacked high, women peeped out from windows in houses above. A nameless little eatery catered to all the workers who were finishing their day’s work with the setting sun. Nothing had changed, it seemed, over a few decades or even centuries.
