At the outset, I would like to emphasise that I deeply love Kerala. The bond is a very deep-rooted one, for on the one hand, my very existence has taken roots from this land, and besides, it has gifted me infinite moments that linger in memory. To me, Kerala has always been a land with a soul- a land that listens to me and talks to me, and a land that can feel happiness and pain just as we all can. 

3 years back, when I landed in Kerala, I had no idea of what awaited me here. I found in me a huge appetite and tremendous energy levels to savour this place in totality. For the first couple of months, I was perhaps floating in the fragrant nostalgia of the past- an old-world Kerala that I deeply loved. I even wrote a little book on Kerala, based on those memories from childhood. So ever slowly, I plunged into my environment- first the geography, then the people. 3 years have passed. The place has left me battered and so depleted of physical and mental energy that if I do not replenish my energy soon, I might just become extinct. I realized that my first book was so incomplete without its sequel, where I would have to talk about the horrors of day-to-day life in Kerala- a draining process that exhausts your body and mind in totality. On occasions when I sit down to listen to this land, I hear it cry, for it is deeply grieved by the attitude of its people. The very people that it nurtures, have destroyed it to the point of no return. It is deeply hurt, but no one hears its cry. 

God’s own country. Truly, I have never seen a place so rich in terms of nature. For this land is blessed with natural resources and with physical beauty. The vegetation is so dense that it gives one the feel of a place untouched by man. As a child, I was fascinated by the abundance of water- streams and rivers and the phenomenal monsoons- they seemed to quench the thirst of my soul. For the artist in me, Kerala was the most sensuous stimulus, for it seemed to awaken all my senses. 

I often wonder where all the people from old-world Kerala disappeared. There were broadly two classes of people in those days- the educated government office employees and the skilled, manual labourers.The private sector was and continues to be very poorly developed in Kerala. A third group comprised of the traders, who were predominantly muslims. My memories of all these classes of people are very pleasant. The educated man valued his educational wisdom. The labourer valued his skill at labour. The trader valued natural resources that earned him his trade. Perhaps because they all valued nature at different levels, it was natural for them to value each others’ attributes too. Education was respected just as labour was appreciated. Art existed at each of these levels. It was a society inspired and motivated by nature, and the contributions to art in that era will perhaps remain unparalleled. 

As the 3 years took me through a progressively intricate journey of modern day Kerala, the memories from the old-world Kerala feel so distant, to the extent that they almost begin to feel unreal. I now realize the significance of the ‘common man’, for he determines most aspects of day-to-day living in any community. Let me now introduce you to the modern-day common man in Kerala. He is the man who contributes to 90% of your interactions and encounters in day-today life. He is the man you will encounter in the streets, in public places and in the buses….he is the man who will walk in as your patient at the hospital….he is the man you buy your grocery and vegetables from….he is the man who will ultimately shape your mood and emotions. Most of the time, this man is literate- he can read and write (often Malayalam and a few words in English). 100% literacy was perhaps this state’s greatest curse. For the first time, I understood how big the gap between literacy and education is, and how much damage literacy can lead to, in the absence of education. Now, our common man who is literate, will have to be excused for the content of his language, for there is the profound absence of a thought process guiding his language. Given that, commenting on the proficiency of his grammar/spelling/ pronounciation holds no water. Now this man easily disqualifies for all the jobs that demand education in the true sense. That leaves him with a pride that is aching to establish itself. He achieves this by various means. First and foremost, he abandons labour. He refuses to indulge in any sort of manual labour that will tarnish his literacy status. He might be a skilled labourer, thanks to family tradition, but he chooses his literacy status over and above family tradition. While his family continues its tradition in order to earn their living, you will find him sitting idly in public places, often in T-shirts with captions that he might not even have deciphered, and trousers that he is extremely uncomfortable in, or less often, in a white loincloth that might not even serve its purpose. He is an eyesore in the culture of Kerala and the despair of the female sex, for letching is his favourite pastime. 

He is not alone in this endeavour. He enjoys the back-up of not just fellow-common men, but also political parties who engage him in various ‘party-promotion activities’. On weekends, you will inevitably encounter them, for they will visit you at your residence for your valuable financial contribution to perhaps a childrens’ function, a temple festival, an orchestra, or anything that has no implication on our lives. To this day, there is no garbage disposal initiative or road repair initiative in these parts. The beautiful Valapattanam river and the sea is the public garbage dumpyard for all practical purposes, but no one has an objection as long as their houses and premises are litter-free. These are definitely not the responsibility of our man in picture, for he has nothing to do with them. When he requests you for a contribution, you need to remember that it is a threat wrapped up in the tone of a request. The contribution should amount to a minimum of Rs 50. The square feet area of your house, your occupation, relatives abroad, and other factors will determine how much more you will need to pay. In a day, you can have upto 5-6 groups visiting you for such contributions. You can choose to not contribute, but you must not be surprised if your house or car is pelted with stones the next day by an unidentified mob. The safer alternative is to lock the gate and and the door, and pretend that you are not in. It particularly helps if there is no access to the doorbell at the gate. 

By now, I have managed to trace the pattern of their operation. Sundays are the destined days for such ‘contributions’. They are unlikely to turn up early in the morning, because they like to sleep late into the morning and treat themselves to a filling breakfast. The most likely time is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. When it comes to lunch, they are very particular. 1pm is the deadline, and it is unlikely that they will turn up after lunch, for they like to sleep after lunch. In the evenings, they like to drink, and that keeps them away. I cannot tell you how good it feels to watch them leave in disappointment, leading them to believe that there is nobody at home. They are all well-built muscular young men, who gradually accumulate fat and embark on obesity and related diseases. 

Now that is yet another thing our common man takes pride in. If you ever report to him that he has diabetes and expect him to be anxious or upset, you are in for a surprise. He will accept the news with elation. On the contrary, if you tell him that he has no diabetes, he will get his blood sugars checked every week until it turns out that he has finally developed diabetes. Ask him if he ever had a chest X-ray done. He will smile mysteriously and come back the next day with a bundle of reports, which would include tests that you might not even have known existed. He might not have a single educational certificate to his name, but there will be no dirth of hospital records and lab test reports. Those are his greatest achievements in life. 

The hospital is his second home. Literacy exposes him to the content of numerous health magazines that he subscribes to. His comprehension of the information provided in these magazines will depend on the potential of his mind. The consequence is that most of the time, the comprehension is incorrect. The irony is that he loves to display this (lack of) knowledge at his next encounter with the doctor. At his visit to the doctor, he rarely talks about symptoms. Coz he has already diagnosed his ailment, and he has only come to the doctor for second opinion. The doctor’s proficiency will be assessed based on whether the doctor seconds or contradicts this diagnosis. For the doctor, there is then the painful process of first arriving at the symptoms of the patient and then making a diagnosis! 

Also, our common man only goes down the hierarchy of doctors. He will not allow referral from an MBBS doctor to a specialist; his is a process of reverse referral. Thus, an instance of chest pain will first take him to the cardiologist (who rules out heart disease) and then to a chest physican (who rules out lung disease), and then he will finally hammer at the doors of an MBBS doctor. By then, it is most likely that the pain would have been aborted on its own(the MBBS doctor might be lucky enough to get the credit!). 

Poverty is perhaps non-existent in Kerala. Every human being in this state has a house to live in, clothes to wear, and food to eat. Poverty begins on a higher scale in Kerala. You might be surprised to discover that someone who owns a house, a few grams of gold and a mobile, also owns a BPL (below poverty line) card. Likewise, the most common car on the streets will be nothing short of a Toyota. The most common setting in which you realize this is when one of these big-sized cars blocks a narrow lane (narrow lanes run along most residential areas and also a good part of the town). Also, the skill at driving is gauged by your speed and road-sense; the more speed you have and the lesser road-sense you have, the more competent you are, as a driver. Hence, the roads in the very heart of town often give you the feel of an arena where buffaloes and sheep and goats are released, and you see them all fleeing in different directions, oblivious to the existence of each other! 

To talk about every aspect of day-to-day life here would end up being a book rather than a post. So I shall stop here. Needless to say, there are people who have potential and substance….just that they occupy so little of our day-to-day lives here. I have a part-time driver now (to escape the stresses and mental trauma of driving here). He tells me something very sensible: ‘The frog thought the well is the world!’ All the good human beings in Kerala leave Kerala, for life here puts their endurance to test, and it inevitably gives way at some point of time. Others take to seclusion and silence. Our common man continues to set standards in Kerala, for neither does he allow privatization and the influx of other communities, nor does he treat himself to a taste of the vast world that thrives outside Kerala! 

Take home message: Kerala is a beautiful place to holiday in. But leave before you get a taste of the crux of life here.

Tags: kerala, common man, attitudes