I aam a Malayalee...

You can take the mallu out of Kerala, but you can't take the Kerala out of the mallu.

I'm what is generally known as a 'fraud mallu'. True, I'm not lost in the abyss of non-mallu-mallu-ness. But I'm close. I've only stayed a couple of months in good old Gods own country. I speak passably good Mallu. But I read and write it at the pace that makes a snail look like a speeding ferrari. I don't like coconut water and prefer tapioca chips to banana chips (which is the complete antithesis of standard mallu behaviour). I have no natural obsession with gold. Neither with coconut oil. The only mallu cliche I actually adhere to is that I do have the 'gelf connection'. Obviously I am truly not the example of a dedicated, mundu-swishing mallu.

Or so I thought.

One evening two fellow mallu hostellites and I began to reminisce. The topic veered towards movies and consequently to music. And then, naturally to all out singing. The kinship and the happiness experienced was immense! It was like being back home! And that's when it hit me. Despite the beauty of all those lovely evenings jamming with Gunther(in beautiful Chennai days) or with Firestone at the stone bench,the satisfaction I obtained from singing plain malayalam songs- regardless of how banal- was several times more. Simply because the songs were malayalam! It brought to mind those lovely lines by the poet Vallathol, roughly transalated as,

"All other languages are merely secondary,it is my language that stands as king."

That shared musical evening was enough to leave me nostalgic and sighing for several days to come. I recall those early days in Chennai when I'd yearn to hear malayalam being spoken. Of course now it's both Tamil as well as Malayalam (oh joy..)

Thetruth is that we humans all of us are intrinsically clannish. Regardless of how many times we try to declare ourselves nomadic or perhaps universal, at the end of the day we still have a hearth that our heart yearns for. And for the average Mallu (even the fraud one, apparently), this is more so since we tend to do things in extremes. No matter how fraud a mallu might be,s/he will always be a true blue mallu at heart. You never know when this trait will manifest itself, but be warned it does when you least expect it. Which brings to mind another verse from one of Vallathol's poems,(which I'm loathe to translate since I'll only make a mash of it)

"Ethu videshathu ponnu vasichaalum, ekaamba putrar naam- Keraliar."

Wherever we go we Mallus will always be Mallus.
On that note I'll get hold of my "ping lungi" and break into "I am a Malayalee". :D