Technically, I am a "Palakkaadan." That is what my Tamilian friends refer to me as. It means a Tamilian (most commonly a Brahmin) from Kerala. If you have ever lived in Tamil Nadu you will realise that the term smacks of raw, undisguised contempt. A feeling that is as bilious as anything you can imagine.
We Tamil Brahmins from Kerala are bound to carry this baggage of being the oppressed minority all our lives. That explains our somewhat difficult to understand world view on most matters. That will be the subject for another post.
What I wish to assert here is that no matter what the Tamilians or the Mallus call me I will always be a Mallu in thought word and deed. I do not wish to split hair to say that I am not from Palghat, that I am from Trivandrum and that we consider ourselves to be a different breed, if possible of even different ethnicity. The fact is we are different from our counterparts from Palakkad.
The Mallu here is a metaphor. An expression to describe a people that are unique and different in many ways. And I do not care if that is worthy of approval by anyone at all.
The Mallu is first of all a sensitive soul. His sense of dignity is stronger than that of any average person, to the point of being almost impractical. Which is why he does not like being spoken to. He does not like to receive favours. He does not like to sponge off. Which is why many a Mallu behaves like Tagore's Babus of NayanJore.
The Mallu's sense of dignity also arises from his sense of equality. Mallus are leftists ethnically, if ever one can visualise an anthropological construct of that sort. Take the most successful Mallu businessman that you know of. Beneath the most self aggrandising Malayali businessman you will find lurking a leftist heart.
That is also the reason why Mallus make for poor subordinates and even poorer followers. Anyone familiar with Kerala politics will appreciate this readily. Kerala perhaps has the largest number of political parties per capita. It also has the largest number of party restructuring events. The market for party restructuring in Kerala is more active than the market for corporate control in India.
Each of the political parties seems to be made up of one or more leaders, a large number of political wannabes waiting for their moment to engineer a split and start a new party that they can lead, the rest being made up of some opportunistic hangers-on for whom being with a political party is a personal need of the moment to be able to swing a transfer (or avoid one), to get a government job or for some other sundry imperative. They rarely seem to be there to follow a political ideology, even less so to follow a leader.
The Mallu has a great sense of humour. It is dark, bordering on the wicked. That sense of humour is important, but for which the average Mallu would be a victim of ennui - a fact that is borne by the relatively large number of suicides among Malayalis.
That brings me to the next reason - the Mallu's deep sense of futility about many things in life. This sense of futility is like opium. It drapes you in an envelope of langour. It is a common backdrop for many a work of literature in Malayalam. Like the grey that O Henry's works are set in.
It is a pity that people who do not understand this sense of futility often mistake it for indolence. Pity because the Mallu often does not do anything not because he does not want or he is not capable of.
We Tamil Brahmins from Kerala are bound to carry this baggage of being the oppressed minority all our lives. That explains our somewhat difficult to understand world view on most matters. That will be the subject for another post.
What I wish to assert here is that no matter what the Tamilians or the Mallus call me I will always be a Mallu in thought word and deed. I do not wish to split hair to say that I am not from Palghat, that I am from Trivandrum and that we consider ourselves to be a different breed, if possible of even different ethnicity. The fact is we are different from our counterparts from Palakkad.
The Mallu here is a metaphor. An expression to describe a people that are unique and different in many ways. And I do not care if that is worthy of approval by anyone at all.
The Mallu is first of all a sensitive soul. His sense of dignity is stronger than that of any average person, to the point of being almost impractical. Which is why he does not like being spoken to. He does not like to receive favours. He does not like to sponge off. Which is why many a Mallu behaves like Tagore's Babus of NayanJore.
The Mallu's sense of dignity also arises from his sense of equality. Mallus are leftists ethnically, if ever one can visualise an anthropological construct of that sort. Take the most successful Mallu businessman that you know of. Beneath the most self aggrandising Malayali businessman you will find lurking a leftist heart.
That is also the reason why Mallus make for poor subordinates and even poorer followers. Anyone familiar with Kerala politics will appreciate this readily. Kerala perhaps has the largest number of political parties per capita. It also has the largest number of party restructuring events. The market for party restructuring in Kerala is more active than the market for corporate control in India.
Each of the political parties seems to be made up of one or more leaders, a large number of political wannabes waiting for their moment to engineer a split and start a new party that they can lead, the rest being made up of some opportunistic hangers-on for whom being with a political party is a personal need of the moment to be able to swing a transfer (or avoid one), to get a government job or for some other sundry imperative. They rarely seem to be there to follow a political ideology, even less so to follow a leader.
The Mallu has a great sense of humour. It is dark, bordering on the wicked. That sense of humour is important, but for which the average Mallu would be a victim of ennui - a fact that is borne by the relatively large number of suicides among Malayalis.
That brings me to the next reason - the Mallu's deep sense of futility about many things in life. This sense of futility is like opium. It drapes you in an envelope of langour. It is a common backdrop for many a work of literature in Malayalam. Like the grey that O Henry's works are set in.
It is a pity that people who do not understand this sense of futility often mistake it for indolence. Pity because the Mallu often does not do anything not because he does not want or he is not capable of.
These finer attitudes require intelligence. That is the last of the reasons that I will always want me to be a Mallu. To be a Mallu means being intelligent. Not in a clever worldly wise way, but in a more refined reflective way.
I cannot look at myself as being anyone other than a Mallu. We are dignified, thinking, sensitive souls in short with a sense of humour.
Is the Mallu so special that only he could be the repository of these attributes? Surely no. But on average it is more likely that a Mallu is all of these, more than anyone else.
So, for all these reasons, high on the endless list of the many things that I ask of the Lord, I pray that some day after all this frenzy of Tennyson's getting and spending is over I will be delivered back to the land I come from, so I may lay my bones there.
And that should I ever be born again, may that be somewhere on the littoral strip of earth on the south west of India that we know as Kerala.
Nanni. Namaskaaram.
I cannot look at myself as being anyone other than a Mallu. We are dignified, thinking, sensitive souls in short with a sense of humour.
Is the Mallu so special that only he could be the repository of these attributes? Surely no. But on average it is more likely that a Mallu is all of these, more than anyone else.
So, for all these reasons, high on the endless list of the many things that I ask of the Lord, I pray that some day after all this frenzy of Tennyson's getting and spending is over I will be delivered back to the land I come from, so I may lay my bones there.
And that should I ever be born again, may that be somewhere on the littoral strip of earth on the south west of India that we know as Kerala.
Nanni. Namaskaaram.
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