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Just loving India

He is a Malayali and she, a Japanese, but they whispered sweet nothings to each other in Russian. So that could be the reason why Nahoko Kakikura and Jayakrishnan continued to speak to each other in Russian till recently, even after nearly a decade o f marriage. “Now we speak in Japanese,” says Nahoko who loves ‘pulissery’, but misses the white rice ‘which sticks together but is not too soft’ in Japan. She goes back home for holidays with her daughter Renuka Kakikura but this time, it was different, she reveals. “When I came back to Kochi, I felt I had come home,” says the thirty something Nahoko who married Jayakrishnan after studying Russian language together in Moscow. He is a marine geologist and she studied East European history. She has been settled in Kerala for two years, though on and off the family visited their folks here. Earlier, she lived in Ukraine and Japan, where work took her husband.

What Nahoko loves best here are the people. “Neighbours and friends are very friendly, relatives very helpful and very close too,” she says of her husband’s relatives, who live close by. She understands Malayalam but is just beginning to talk the language. But that does not stop her from doing all the shopping herself. You can see her often, buying fruits and vegetables at the Edappally shops. She is able to ‘negotiate,’ with autorickshaw drivers , in English and Malayalam, Nahoko says.

What’s for lunch? “Chapathi”, she replies, with a short ‘cha’ and a shorter ‘pa’.

The climate is something that she loves in Kerala for “it is very tough in Tokyo’ when it is winter.” Also she finds everything is cheaper here. “The only thing which is expensive here, when compared to Japan is toilet paper,” and she laughs.

Religion never came in the way because “back home in Japan, religion is not important at all.” But because her husband is religious, she takes great care of the puja room where she lights the lamp every morning and evening. On a row are placed pictures of Ganapathi, Devi and Krishna that her husband bought from Guruvayur.

Home maker Nahoko Kakikura. With her family, husband Jayakrishnan, a marine geologist and daughter Renuka

“I know my mother-in-law wants to talk to me and I also want to chat with her, but there is a language barrier,” she laments. Contrary to expectations, both her folks at home and Jayakrishnan’s people had not objected to their marriage, in the late nineties. “We got married at Guruvayur and I wore a sari. When I go out shopping by bus, I always wear churidar-kameez,” Nahoko says.

And ‘inji curry’ is her other favourite curry. She loves mangoes and jackfruit, which are not common in Japan.

Currently learning Spoken English, Nahoko says the schools in Japan still teach only in Japanese. Her parents usually come over for holidays and they love the greenery here. The birdsong at dawn is what Nahoko loves best in the neighbourhood.

This Indo-Japanese collaboration sure is a hit!

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