Isn’t it astonishing that there is no God of Spice in any religion? If there were a Lord Pepper, perhaps as an avatar of a mighty ancient species, then the grandest temple for him would definitely stand in Kochi. From the mid-14th century onwards Kochi developed as an important port on the west coast of India and a centre for the spice trade with China and the Near East. Here, Arabian traders bought pepper at a cheap price and sold the spice thereafter to the Venetians at a colossal price – without once revealing the source of the precious berry. That led the Europeans into actually believing that pepper was a divine product and to start painting pepper trees in their pictures of paradise. The hunt for pepper, the driving force behind Columbus’ and Vasco da Gama’s great voyages of discovery, can therefore well be considered a search for paradise, even as a search for the divine. It must have been a truly weird feeling to be able to sprinkle a bit of that sacred kernel on chicken or roast.
The divine light of pepper first began to blaze when Vasco da Gama discovered a sea-route to India and landed on the Malabar Coast in May 1498. Shortly after 1500 the Portuguese established their first trading post in Kochi, and built their first fortress in the subcontinent shortly afterward. The mythical pepper rapidly went on to spawn a sound everyday trade. Kochi remains a city in which one should erect a temple to Lord Pepper – even if there have long been other things of other dimensions being shipped in and out of its harbour.
First Publication: 3-1-2013
Modifications: 23-6-2013