Chinese fishing nets in Cochin?

What are these guys doing? They are raising the Chinese fishing net. It is a counter- balanced system that works with guys pulling the net out of the water and the balance of large stones (you can kind of see those, center top part of photo) working to drop the net into the water. It's a cool thing to watch. 

Cochin has had everybody here, it's a melting pot of cultures, Portugese, British, Spanish, all searching for spices to trade. There are also chuches, mosques and the oldest synagogue in India (how many are there anyway?). It's an interesting place: historic, scenic, charming. It's funny to be in a place in India that smells of fish. Compared to the usual scent of cow dung, exhaust fumes and burning garbage. There is the infrequent smell of jasmine, normally found in a garland hanging over a deity or in a girls hair. The other scents are more 'atmospheric'. There aren't a lot of cows wandering around either, here it's goats. There are a lot of little goats tagging behind mom, it's very cute. 

Meanwhile, I rented a bicycle and aside from getting lost and getting my bare arms nicely done to lobster red (it is seafood oriented at least), it's fun tooling around. The traffic is manageable, until I got lost and then it got a bit scary, trucks and large 4 wheel drives, versus the small Tata cars and endless rickshaws. Anyway, it's hot as hell, 90 degrees and humid as anything, it's kind of a melting pot in a bodily sense, as well as social and historical one.