1:19 PM

Mallus and their Civility!!

In the heartland of Kerala, in a calm town called Kottayam, you will find a people who are the most decent of the lot.
The other day while passing through this sleepy town, one early morning, the bus I was travelling in stopped at a small bus stop. A young man having a cup of tea, who obviously wanted to board the bus, was caught unawares and his immediate dilemma was to gulp down the cup of tea, throw it away or carry the disposable cup into the bus to finish his drink before the bus started moving again.
My bet was that he would carry it into the bus. For many a times I have carried my cuppa coffee all the way from the cafeteria at office, down four floors to the smoking area in full public view.
But decency and civility overwhelmed this guy. Drinking a cup of tea inside a bus was too non Kottayamite he decided and so he carefully placed the half drunk cup of tea on the road and got into the bus.
It was a simple gesture, and perhaps hardly anyone noticed, but I could not but admire his sense of civility, perhaps bordering those of the eccentric English?
Early that morning I had arrived at Kottayam bus stand to catch this very bus and it was early in the morning, too early even for the bus services to start. I found a group of well dressed natives in shirt and mundu smoking away to glory. Now this was a strange sight since Malayalees have self-enforced a ban on smoking in public areas of their own accord, not out of fear of the law. But as twilight came, and the presence of females at the bus stop came to their notice virtually all of them abandoned their cigarettes and again took the role of the self righteous Malayalee who will never slight a lady! Do you know that one of the first smoking bans in India was implemented in Kerala after a PIL raised by a Kottayam Lady College Lecturer?
Another trait of the malayalee that defies explanation is their total agnostical reaction to the large number of Biharis, Oriyas and Bengalis coming to Kerala to do menial work, in recent times.
Given that Kerala has one of the highest unemployment rates in India, not withstanding the high levels of literacy, outsiders taking their jobs should be anathema to Malayaless, much as North Indians are to Bal Thackeray. Of course earlier there was menial labour pouring in from Tamilnadu, but they were the equivalent of the Mexican janitors to the affluent Americans.
Compounding to this problem is the high density of population in most parts of Kerala. Natural and artificial resources would definitely be strained with a huge influx of outsiders.
But nay, malayalees are not xenophobic to any extent. If you hear a Malaylaee talking to a Bengali or a Maharashtrian for that matter for the most part it would be to give them some tips to reach some place or sometimes purely for the fun of practising their school learned Hindi on the unsuspecting "victims".