Here is an exuberant oasis of coconut palms and tropical plants. The two-storied Spanish villa style hotel resort is roofed with green tiles that create from a distant - a vista of verdant expanse. A central courtyard and deep-set surrounding verandahs provide both shade and cross-ventilation. I had read somewhere of 'old world substance being combined with new world chic and comfort'. This was it. Its charm and reputation has travelled far - to the capital Delhi. For the Prime Minister, Atal Vajpayee spent the New Year period at this idyllic location seeking peace and privacy. Our visit in late January was post-peak season and comfortably unpopulated.
According to a seasoned traveller "once spa-ed, you're not spared, for the process is addictive." The other dictum is equally memorable - "a good spa, like a casino, should keep you blissfully ignorant of the outside world." A Spa Village in Perak, Malaysia is said to offer 'Foot Pounding', "a treatment traditionally practiced in China on women with bound feet (Lotus Feet) for the relief of aches and pains" - an understatement surely. Less dramatic terminology for contemporary aches and pains, reflexology or Japanese art of shiatsu should suffice. The promotion brochure elaborates on 'Foot Pounding'. "Your feet are soaked in warm soapy water and dried before the soles are given a light pounding. The rhythmic action gives a lulling sensation and immediately relaxes you." Nothing dramatic here.
What is dramatic is the 'Lotus Feet Shoe-shop' we visited on a trip to the old town in Malacca in Malaysia. Malacca has been described as an axis of global trade - 'The Place Where Winds Meet.' For centuries, the Malacca Straits was a crossroad between countries and continents in an early global maritime culture - a venue where merchants met and mingled. It was said that 'Whoever is the lord of Malacca, has his hands on the throat of Venice.' A coloured photograph in The East India Company: Trade and Conquest from 1600 shows a porcelain dinner service bearing the arms of the East India Company intended for the Madras Presidency, recovered from a wreck off Malacca. Scouts of Vasco da Gama reached Malacca in 1508. In 1511, the Portuguese Alphonse de Albuquerque and nineteen ships captured Malacca from the Sultan of Malacca. With this acquisition, Portugal gained control of the sea routes to the East Indies. Portuguese rule lasted some 140 years. This was the 'Little Lisbon of Malacca' but a global entrepot. Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, British form communities with long links with this seaside port town. It has been said that at one time - eighty-four languages were spoken in this maritime melting pot.
An elaborate account of Malacca's primary trading position in the eastern half of the globe in the sixteenth century is provided by W.H. Coates in The Old Country Trade of the East Indies (1911). "It is interesting to note, in reviewing the progress of the Country Trade how cities have risen and fallen. Malacca and Ormuz (presently Hormuz in Iran), both in their time. Portuguese strongholds are especially cases in point. That great authority, McPherson, in the 'History of Commerce with India' tells us: 'To that city (Malacca) were carried the cloves, nutmegs and mace of the Moluco and Banda Islands, the sandalwood of Timor, the Camphor of Borneo, the gold and silver of Luconia, the pepper, drugs and dye stuffs, the perfumery, rich silks and porcelain, all the best variety of merchandise produced and manufactured in China, Java, Siam and the neighbouring countries or islands. There the merchants from all the more Eastern countries met with those of Hindoostan and the Western Coasts of the Indian Ocean; and every one procured what was in request in exchange for what was redundant in his own country The cities of Calicut, and Cambay on the west side of Hindoostan, Ormus in the Persian Gulf, and Aden on the South Coast of Arabia were particularly enriched by the trade to Malacca; and they also traded to Pegu for rubies and lacker, to Bengal for cloths, (now called piece-goods), to Calicare (or Kilcare) for pearls, to Narsinga for diamonds, to Ceylon for cinnamon and rubies, and to the coast of Malabar for pepper, ginger, and many other kinds of spices." Favourable monsoon winds brought trading merchants from far and wide.
The Ming dynasty in China espoused tiny feet as the arch-symbol of feminine allure and beauty. Little girl's feet were tied and stunted (bonsai-style) in the hope that the arrested growth would come to resemble lotus buds that might help to make a socially advantageous marriage. Jin Lian (Golden Lotuses) were symbols of female beauty and elevated social status. Women hobbled around on bound feet - the 'lotus gait of women with bound feet' - before Mao Zedong's pledge that 'women should hold up half the sky.' The age-old tradition of foot-binding (not foot-pounding) was banned in Malaysia only in 1911. Strolling through the main street of old Malacca, we stopped at a shoe shop. One family in Malacca has made these tiny silk shoes for bound feet since the practice was brought over by Chinese immigrants in the early fifteenth century. There is still one craftsman who produces 'lotus-feet' shoes for souvenirs. On display are satin and brocade shoes for the bound feet. We saw a 3-inch shoe. A more desirable and valued 'lotus feet' should measure 2 inches - declared our male guide. I took one look at my size 37 walking-shoes and decided that I am one lucky woman!
San Zun were five examples of three inch ideal arched wood shoes covered in fabric that I was morbidly fascinated when seeing them at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto in the summer of 2006. This museum is a stunning exposition of the foot covering and explores through the ages the role of the shoe, its fashion and the many renowned individuals whose footwear adorns the display cabinets: Elvis Presley, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Pierre Trudeau, Terry Fox, Elizabeth Taylor…This is the last word on Shoes.
Goa was part of the Mauryan Empire well into the third century BC. In the early fourteenth century, Muslims took control of Goa. In 1370, Goa became part of the Vijaynagar Empire whose capital was at Hampi. Vasco da Gama in 1498 in a 13,000 mile voyage from Lisbon reached Malabar on the western coast of India. Scouts of Vasco da Gama reached Malacca in 1508. Annual sea voyages by fleets of Portuguese merchant vessels were the result. The Sultan of Bijapur conceded defeat to Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510 and the small distant nation of Portugal -an aspiring seapower - established an autonomous trading post in Goa. Albuquerque's tomb, along with other Portuguese historical luminaries - Vasco da Gama and Henry the Navigator - is to be found in the Igreja de Santa Engracia in Lisbon. The majestic church - a National Pantheon since 1966 - took close to three hundred years to build. However, Vasco da Gama died in Cochin in India in 1524 and was buried there at the St. Francis Church and only later were his remains shifted to Lisbon. Prince Henry, the Navigator himself was never an explorer yet was the inspirational force behind the sea-borne travellers - medieval marauders, merchants and mariners who put Portugal on the world map as pioneers of the western Age of Exploration. For the economist Adam Smith, the significance is momentous. For him, "The discovery of America and that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the History of Mankind." Nothing less.
The discovery by Portuguese of the sea route from Europe to the East Indies broke the Arab dhow and eastern monopoly of the prized and highly lucrative spice trade. Earlier, all eastern products reached Europe via Arab, Persian and Indian traders. Now, there was direct access from eastern sources to western markets. Here were vast lands producing precious cardamom, ebony, nutmeg, pepper, sandalwood…Most of all, Europe wanted spices - crucial condiments for the preservation of meat. In India and Portugal: Cultural Interactions by Jose Pereira and Pratapaditya, Stephen Neil in an article 'Colonialism and Christian Missions' declares "The history of Europe can almost be written in terms of Pepper…In a world which as yet knew neither the potato nor the turnip, the winter diet of salt meat and hard bread must have been almost unendurable, unless eastern spices were available to disguise in some measure the unpleasant flavour of what without these would have been almost unbearable." This comment highlights the usage of spices as an essential item. The following statement by J.H. Parry in Discovery: The World's Great Explorers, Their Triumphs and Tragedies provides a social dimension to this necessity. "Because spices were scandalously expensive, their presence at an elegant table was as much as a symbol of status as courtly manners and elaborate mores."
In search of spices, Goa developed into a major commercial hub, as an increasing number of trading vessels docked at the natural sea harbour. Goa went on to become the capital of Portugal's empire in the east and the principal trading post for all imports from the east and en route to the west. Earlier in 1498, they had started business at Koppat near Calicut. Calicut gave its name to - cloth, cotton and calico - staple commercial commodities of the day. As early as in 1503, the first Portuguese fortress in India was erected at Cochin in Kerala on India's western coast. The Portuguese presence in India was "initiated in Kerala and evolved in Goa" note Pereira and Pratapadity. Goa went on to supplant Cochin as the economic emporium of the Indies. Furthermore, Kochin was the first Western-style city raised on India soil (the last, as built by a colonial power, was New Delhi inaugurated in 1931). Other ports for commercial seafarers were established in Mozambique in 1507, Malacca (Malaysia) in 1511 and Hormuz (Iran) in 1515. In 1616, a Czech missionary W.P. Kirwitzer reached Goa. One Pedro de Covilha, a Portuguese disguised himself as an Arab merchant and boarded an Arab trading ship bound east. He collected information on sea-routes after visits to Calicut, Goa and other western coastal sites of India. He died in Ethiopia in 1526. Yet for centuries prior to Europe's Age of Discovery and Race of Exploration, Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Arabs touched down on the western shores of Malabar - largely in pursuit of the lucrative spice trade. In the seventh century in a measure of its popularity, coveted Arab horses were traded for spices.
(To be continued)
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