The story of the ubiquitous Malayali

The hour was dusk, the year, 1987, and the place, Sao Paulo International Airport. The celebrated Sao Paulo Art Bienal just concluded. Yusuf Arakkal, the Indian ambassador of art for the event, was waiting for his flight back to India. He heard a shout – in Malayalam! Surprised, he met a bunch of Malayalis in the Brazilian capital. They were sailors, equally adept in Portuguese, as they were in their native tongue. Such is the ubiquitous-ness of Malayalis, says Arakkal.

Pick any nook on planet earth, and there is all probability that you will run into a Malayali there, is the regular jibe. The butt of many jokes, “the omnipresent Malayali” is also known for his resilience and adaptability, wherever he chooses to move to.

“We are known to be very hard working. (Pause) That is after we move out of Kerala,” laughs Arakkal. He came to Bangalore in 1962, – “actually, I ran away from home” – when just a teenager. The year-and-a-half that he spent on Bangalore streets shaped Arakkal. Now an artist extraordinaire, Arakkal, says he retains his Malayali-ness – “down to our distinctive accent,” he chuckles.

For Balagopal Varma – he belongs to one of the first Kerala families to move to Bangalore – the Malayali connect is a tad abstract. His father, Kerala Varma of the Travancore royal family, came to Bangalore because it was then the pensioners’ paradise. “The schools and the weather were the big lures,” says Varma, who was born in Bangalore in 1949. “I can understand the Malayali ethos, because basically, I am one. But I can equally relate to Kannadigas. In fact, I can read and write Kannada, while Malayalam, I can only speak,” he says. He is part of a Malayali Kshatriya association called Sangamam. “It’s an ideal platform to groom hunt if you have a daughter,” says Varma.

Onam, the secular state festival of Kerala, resonates loudly here. There are so many Malayali organisations in the city, including the World Malayalee Council, which has been a strong chapter in the city since 2002, and each celebrates the festival in a big way.

“Sadya (feast) is a must,” says Sreedevi Unni, danseuse. It has been 34 years since she made Bangalore her home. “Long enough that I am now three-quarters Kannadiga,” says the artiste, who was awarded the Karnataka Kalashri Award in 2002.
“Name any field, and I can cite a Malayali who has made it big there in the city,” says Unni, one of the founder members of the East Cultural Association (ECA).

Thanks to the ECA, Onam and the values that it promotes are far from forgotten.

The degree of Malayali-ness varies in each. Yet, none denies the Malayali streak. “I did not consciously relate to the Malayali in me until recently. I was brought up in Bombay and Delhi, and Kerala was relegated to vacation memories. Of course, one notices accents, the difference in our sambaar, etc, but by and large, I admired assimilation in every sense, both the superficial and the subterranean. There are the genes and the jokes that I can get only as a Malayali. The books, the films, the punch lines in Sreenivasan’s screenplay, the sayings, the folksongs, the sympathy and the misgivings...all of which come to me only because I am a Malayali,” says Shinie Antony, who compiled an anthology on Kerala called Kerala, Kerala, Quite Contrary.