December is here and suddenly the whole Kochi looks festive. Wherever you go, lights, decorations, displays in red, white and green, the smell of cakes and pastries, and carols keep reminding you that Christmas is nearing. From street hawkers to the high-end fashion boutique owners, all those in sales are gearing up for peak season. Let’s look at what all is being readied to welcome the festival of brisk business. Christmas is never Christmas without a cake. Unveiling the season’s yummy delights, bakers are busy bringing out their latest cake editions to bang our taste buds. Cakes range from the old-fashioned plum cakes to the adorable Santa cakes, which are too cute to eat. Christmas-themed red velvet and black forest cakes are also in high demand.
Shiny, a baker in Fort Kochi, wants to go the homely way while preparing cakes by avoiding fillers and adulterants used by most bakers. This season, Shiny presents a variety of plum cakes – normal plum, rich plum and the Delight’s special plum with best quality dry fruits soaked for around four months. Veeralakshmi Prabhu, another famous baker in the city, is bringing out a super cool Santa series of cakes. X’mas-themed cakes come in various sizes and shapes – from the sweet Christmas tree to Santa, reindeers, snowman and fairies. Along with cakes come dry fruit chocolates, brownies, candy cane cookies and also Christmas hampers that include chocolate truffles, yule log, homemade wine and ginger cookies. While the normal plum cakes range from Rs 150, the artistically decorated customised ones with edible Santa, polar bears and stars start at Rs 2,000. The hub of all business, the famous Broadway with its ironically narrow streets, is all illuminated with stars and glittery decorations. The shopkeepers eagerly announce the names of the newly-arrived stars – from the shimmering Jimikki Kammal to the Baahubali, Punyalan and Pulimurugan stars, ranging from Rs 120 to Rs 1,500.
(Photo: Sudheesh S. Namboothiri)
“All sorts of stars are ready – LED, paper, and plastic ones. The names are all to attract people; the stars are pretty much the same ones of the previous years’” says Justin, while stacking the LED stars in his crowded shop. Though he doesn’t think there are interesting arrivals this time, he feels the showstealer is the Chinese glittery ball with 12 rotating colours. On display are huge red Chinese domes with Christmas greetings written all over them, each costing Rs 400- Rs 450. Exclusive shops for wreaths too have good sales. The month has just begun, but all the shops are crowded with people rummaging the stacks looking for the latest stars of the season, especially the Jimikki Kammal.
Some even come back for their favourites of the previous year. “People come asking for the striped yellow-black Pulimurugan stars. Business is good though GST has affected us too. Christmas and New Year is the best time of the year for small retailers like us,” says Thampi, who runs a small shop in Mather Bazaar. The stars are all procured locally but the coloured balls with customised designs are made according to demand by artisans from Kolkata and Jaipur. Being the city of latest trends and fashion, Christmas has let its presence known in the clothing realm too. Fashion designer Sreejith Jeevan, who has brought out his Christmas collection, says, “One exciting part of Christmas is the vast preparation that goes behind it. There would be a wind of change in the air.
Colours and lights would please our eyes while carols and the aroma of cake fill the air. We would be busy doing various things like dressing up for the occasion, getting the food ready, doing prayers, planning vacations and above all waiting for carols to reach home.” It is this nostalgia that Sreejith has brought into his collection ‘Past Present’. “The idea behind Past Present is to look at Christmas with nostalgia. Christmas in Kerala has a unique eclectic character that brings together a sense of prayer with celebration that is rooted in tradition and a multi-cultural past. We’ve looked at these things to draw inspiration for the collection,” he says.
Shot in the different rooms of an old Syrian Christian home, the collection, which is done in Sreejith’s signature style, is a tribute to how his grandmother celebrated a winter holiday. “Dressing up, preparing for the carols, dreaming of the holiday in the hills, brainstorming over a Christmas meal, making a herbarium of pressed flowers, creating cross-stitch embroidery, etc. were just a few of them. We love the idea of how the monotonous everyday chores around Christmas were a wonderful way to bring people of all ages, religions and communities together to celebrate,” he adds. Christmas is a couple of weeks away, but the fervor is on full display everywhere in Kochi.
