Kashmiri traders struggle to get back on track

A majority of them have returned home unable to afford rent accumulated over time

The pandemic has left Mattancherry and Fort Kochi, which once prided of being the prime tourism hubs of Kerala, ghost heritage towns. Among the few hundred traders for whom tourism was the sole source of income in these towns are 90 traders from Kashmir who settled down here during the past three decades. They sold curios, jewellery, handicrafts, garments, shawls, and other items that guests, especially foreign tourists, were fond of, through their emporia. Rows and rows of closed shops in the two locales that these traders from the Paradise on Earth once manned, are a sore reminder of how the pandemic wrecked the livelihood of 90 families from Kashmir who made Kochi their home. Less than half-a-dozen of these traders own houses here. The rest live in rented homes.