We The Malayalee

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This post is inspired by the a similar post by my good friend Abhinav. He did a splendid job of putting in words what he feels about his mummy land Tamil Nadu (http://abhinavj.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/chennai-my-love/) (I am not trying to be Bal Tackre here). So I thought I d shed some light on my mummy land Kerala.. After all divided we stand, divided we fall but somehow we stay united for the fear of  falling off the map. That paradox is too elaborate to explain over here. For the time being lets see everything in shades of gray and consider that we are all children under the sun in the land of unity and diversity.

Yes one is an inmate of God’s own country (see what i mean, no one really knows the difference between a state and a country here) Kerala. And one is extremely content for being born in this place, because one has no idea how one would have survived this long elsewhere in someone else’ shoes.

One is generalizing in this post and one fully understands that generalization is never that simple a process.

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Kerala is a place where if u look closely enough, which u will have ample time to do if u were born  and brought up here, would notice that u are in a totally different world after every 30 kilometers or so. But in this post I shall point to things that are exclusive to Kerala and those that have not been fairly documented in the young gen way.

THE PEOPLE

The proud people of Kerala are always happy or thereabouts….. We don’t want more. We are happy with our coconut trees, rubber trees, banana trees and this tree and that tree.. We don’t really care if we don’t have enough cereal, hey after all we are part of this bigger country India that has other serious agrarian states. As long as there are no lorry strikes we ll live Strong and die old.

We are a very unenterprising people. We start shops but we don’t give away articles unless we are given exact change, breaking bigger currency is a sin in our book of exchange theories. Not only are we unenterprising we are lazy to go ask for change to our fellow vendor so u get the point….

but guess what!! Even with all this, there are shops that have been running since yore, cos here in Kerala We define our equilibrium and stay there even if nucs are exploded in our country. Given that fact, we define very easily attainable and easily maintainable equilibrium. We dont want to be engineers unless someone else in our family or our immediate neighbor is one. Same goes for business tycoons or shop keepers or doctors or ne other profession for that matter (thievery and pickpocketing included.)

We are everywhere, let it be europe america the moon… u ll always find a fellow malayali. The arabian promise land is our own property though we live there under the stewardship of some sheik or the other. The Gelf as we like to call it is an extension of our own backyard. Hell, most of us grew up thinking that it was a leap away.

THE GOVERNMENT

We enjoy our harthals

In Kerala we know the power of our vote and we shift governments when they do the mess arounds. Which undoubtedly they do, for in this state everyone in the government like to consider the treasury and public funds to be limited extensions of their own personal accounts. Here in Kerala We the people elect governments so that they can give us proper roads, proper rations, proper judicial peace and most importantly more n more hospitals to treat our sick and distribute alcohol atleast as gud as the last government. We excuse every government for the ‘minor’ glitches like failing to provide job opportunities or developing the agriculture or industry. Here in this state we take our price rise issues very seriously and the only thing we have learned from years of communist influence and Gandhiji is that We can change any decision with a harthal and a protest. We here in Kerala enjoy our harthals in fact they are considered a blessing for developing the social circle among the villagers, and watching movies among both villagers and townsfolk. In Kerala government is almost like a family business. Too much politics involved so maybe later on that last point.

THE ROAD

u are there n then u are not there

We have the most elaborate race track in the entire world, and we definitely have the biggest automobile race in the world. Unlike formula one, unlike WRC, we race buses. Yes you heard right. we race public transport buses. Our bus drivers have taken the scientific experiment to prove that brownian motion collisions are a thing of the past. Some even try to disprove newtons laws on momentum and stuff like that. The point being We the people in Kerala love our buses and the ride and thrill it gives.

THE FOOD

Food is an article of supreme importance and more importantly something people get angry over. In Kerala the premises of food are

1. it should be spicy as hell

2. it should be cheap

3. it should be served in a clean banana leaf facing the right direction.

If anyone has benefited from the hindu practice of worshiping cows that the rest of India take quite seriously it is the people of Kerala. We love our beaf. We love it because it is tasty it is cheap and best of all its everywhere.

THE ALCOHOL

We persevere, We drink, We persevere and we drink some more

In kerala every occasion, let it be pleasant or unpleasant is an occasion to celebrate with a bottle of alcohol. And our government dictates that everyone who drinks should have the unpleasant experience of being catered to by the most dreadful alchohol distribution system in the world. Here in Kerala we buy our alcohol standing in queues that extend longer than the panama canal from the only alcohol seller in the state The all powerful Beverages Corporation of Kerala. But that doesnt stop us. We persevere, we drink, we persevere and we drink some more.

THE SENSE OF HUMOR

We are the most literate state in the entire country and we understand the futility of certain things. Yes we understand that having a lot of children is useless because here in this state every one takes the split of parental property super seriously. We love our dailies and hence we love to read. Our dailies are the worlds most unlimited source of masala filled news, wrongly reported news, multi angled news (the same story covered in contradicting ways in multiple dailies). Not only are we literate we are a very cultured people.

We love our cinemas. We have only 2 actors in cinemas. Apart from Mohanlal and Mammooty anyone and everyone on the silver screen is a wannabe and an overkill.We take the idea of adult rated movies in cinemas really seriously. We have the largest number of ‘adult’ (over 50) movie goers in the world. Kerala is  the only place in the world where so many old people with a towel on their heads are in hiding in the visible vicinity of a bus stand near a ‘good’ cinema waiting for the next bus.

We understand the futility of fighting over religion, but we sure enjoy reading about people going head hunting in the name of the lard in the other parts of the country.

All this said and done we are one happy people. We enjoy being us and we don’t want to be anyone else though we sure do get temporary visions of ‘grass is greener on the other side’ and understand that it was only temporary. Kerala shall prevail come rain, come shine.