Hunchback and Sugar Loaf:
Two Tourist Attractions in Rio de Janeiro
By M.P. Prabhakaran
Rio de Janeiro is a city built around a bay. When the Portuguese, during their days of colonial expansion, crossed the Atlantic and sailed into the bay, they mistook it for the mouth of a river. And because it happened in a January — on January 1, 1502, to be precise — they called it Rio de Janeiro, meaning the river of January. The city that came up around the bay, later known as the Baia de Guanabara (Guanabara Bay), took the same name. In time, it became the capital of Brazil and remained as such until 1960. In that year, the capital moved to the newly-built Brasilia. But Rio continued as the cultural capital of the country. It has held that status till this day.
Bounded by mountains covered with luxuriant forests on one side and by the beautiful Copacabana beach on the other, the city is among the few places in the world to which tourists keep coming back again and again.
A Swedish woman I ran into on the beach, who had worked as an au pair in New Jersey for six months, was visiting the place for the third time. “Don’t you want to visit the U.S. a second time?” I asked her.
“Maybe after Bush leaves the office,” she said.
I was in no mood for a political talk, or else I would have explored why she said what she said. Her response convinced me, however, that the wide popularity the president enjoyed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had begun to fade across the Atlantic in just two months.
A few yards away, I saw a couple buying coconut. The cool, soothing coconut milk is very popular among the beachgoers of Rio. I watched how the coconut vendor made a hole to insert a straw into the coconut. He did it crudely by plunging a pointed iron rod into the mouth of the coconut. I couldn’t help contrasting it with the way it is done in Bombay. The coconut vendors on the sidewalks of Bombay, most of them lungi-clad Muslims from Kerala, have elevated the shaving off of the husk and making an opening at one end of the coconut into an art form. Passersby watch it admiringly.
The couple threw away the straw and started drinking the milk straight from the coconut. That gave me an excuse to initiate a conversation with them. “That’s how most people in my home state in India do it,” I told them. “They don’t use straws either.”
“Which state in India are you talking about?” the woman asked.
When I said “Kerala,” she nearly dropped the coconut on the floor. “You are from Kerala!” she exclaimed. “I am from Dublin and I work as a nurse. There are many nurses from Kerala working with me in my hospital. I heard a lot about that place. One day we are going to visit your state.”
“It's a place worth visiting,” I told her. “Don’t be dissuaded by the people from Kerala you have met. They may be ugly. But the place is beautiful. By the way, Kerala gets its name not from the nurses it has exported around the world, but from what you are holding in your hand.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I explained: “In Malayalam, the language of Kerala, the word for coconut is kera. Kerala means the land of kera. From one end of the state to the other, you will see coconut palms all over.”
“How interesting,” she said. “None of my Kerala friends told me this story.”
“They will, one day,” I told her. “Right now, they are too busy making money.” I asked her whether she was enjoying Rio.
“Enjoying is an understatement,” she said. “I had been here only three months ago. It was such an unforgettable experience that I was feeling guilty enjoying it alone. I was impatient to come back and relive the experience with my boyfriend by my side.” She gave a pinch on her boyfriend’s cheek. He grinned from ear to ear.
“You are a lucky young man,” I told him.
Before I took leave of the young Irish couple, I advised them to make it a point to visit Kovalam beach while in Kerala. “It will be another unforgettable experience,” I said. And if you ever come to New York, please contact me.” I gave them my New York telephone number and continued my saunter.
Esophagus Kissing
Hardly had I walked a few yards when my attention was caught by two guys doing something funny. One was lustily watching a young couple making love on a wooden bench a few feet away and the other was recording the scene on his video camera. The lovemaking had reached the stage of esophagus kissing and the couple engaged in it were oblivious to their being videotaped.
“You must preserve it for posterity,” I told the guy with the camera as I reached near him.
He liked my remark. When I told him that I live in New York, he opened up: “This is November. This is the third time I am visiting this place since September 11. The place helps me a lot to get over the trauma I suffered on that day.”
On that day, when terrorists struck the World Trade Center, he was at work at his Morgan Stanley office in Tower 1. He was one of those who miraculously survived, while many of his coworkers perished. Since then, he had been on disability. His disability allowances would continue until his therapist certified him fit to resume work. “Since September 11, I have been enjoying every moment of my life with a vengeance,” he said. From the way he was savoring the scenes at Copacabana, I could tell he was.
Back at the hotel, the tour bus that was to take me to Corcovado and Pao d’Acucar was waiting for me. Others booked on the same tour were already on board. I had already earned their displeasure. I could tell from the way they looked at me.
Corcovado and Pao d’Acucar are two of the numerous mountains that add to the beauty of Rio de Janeiro. Both, because of their accessibility and the spectacular view of the city they provide from their peaks, have become great tourist attractions.
Corcovado in Portuguese means the hunchback. From our vantage point in the city, it did look like one, provided the person was lying, facing down. As the bus wound its way up the hill, the tour guide gave a description of the type of people who lived on each layer of the hill. Actually, his description was redundant. One could tell, even without his description, who lived in the hutment in the foothills; who lived in the houses on the next layer; and who in the mansions above it.
The guide also pointed at a distance to the notorious drug-infested slum area of Rio. They call it favela. They are controlled by warlords whom even police and politicians dread unless, of course, they are in cahoots with those criminals. And many of them are. A recent BBC study says that, during the past 14 years, 4,000 under-eighteen children have been killed in gun battles in Rio’s favelas.
We also passed a lot of jackfruit trees on the way. The guide told us that those trees were originally brought from India and China. I had no problem believing him. They reminded me of my childhood days in Kerala when I used to visit my grandmother's house, the compound of which was full of jackfruit trees. Oversize jackfruits also reminded me of Dolly Parton.
Atop the hump of the hunchback is a huge statue of Christ. The Cristo Redentor, as they say in Portuguese, meaning Christ the Redeemer, was built in commemoration of the centennial in 1921 of Brazil’s independence from Portugal. Ten years’ arduous work by a team of French artisans headed by sculptor Paul Landowski and 1,145 tons of cement have gone into the making of the statue. Opened to tourists on October 12, 1931, it stands 100 feet tall on 2,300-foot-high Corcovado. Breadthwise also, it is an imposing monument. Between the middle fingers of Jesus’s hands, outstretched in an embracing posture, it measures 98 feet and 5 inches. The irreverent among Rio residents have a different explanation for that posture. They say Jesus was getting ready to clap for his favorite samba.
For Christians and non-Christians alike, the statue of Christ is reason enough to take a trip to the top of Corcovado. What brings tourists there in droves, however, is the stunningly beautiful view of Rio de Janeiro they get once they are up there. As for me, that view alone makes me want to visit Rio again and again.
Pao d’Acucar
The next destination of our conducted tour was Pao d’Acucar. The native Indians had called the 1,300-foot granite block pau-nh-acugua (high, pointed peak). The Portuguese changed it to Pao d’Acucar, meaning sugar loaf, for two reasons: one, it rhymed with the original Indian name; two, its shape reminded them of the conical loaves in which refined sugar was sold. Though not as tall and lush with trees as Corcovado, the number of tourists it attracts is quite the same. And the panoramic view it provides of the surrounding areas and of the Atlantic Ocean is equally beautiful. The transportation to the top of the mountain is by Italian-made cable cars. Riding them is a joy.
People prefer to visit Sugar Loaf Mountain at sunset when the granite block and the city below it glisten in the evening sun. They hang around there long after the sunset to watch another glistening spectacle: the samba performed by colorfully-costumed dancers at the famous nightclub atop the Sugar Loaf.
On our ride back to the hotel along the Copacabana beach, I took another look at the petite mountain to make sure that it did resemble sugar loaf. It did not. It looked more like a circumcised penis, when the person is in lying down, looking at the ceiling, longing to be with his sex partner. I dared not say that to my tour guide.
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