Slices of Kerala Life

Canal, or river in the making?

Which is what a vast majority of God’s Own Men as well Women (not to mention Children!) must be wishing these days. This is all the more apparent in the city of Ernakulam which just cannot cope with even a brief spell of rains. A poor drainage system, chockablock with sewage is the chief culprit during rains.

The recent downpour has had the hapless citizens left with hardly any option but to grin and bear whatpours down and collects on the city roads. If this is the plight of roads, the condition of the open drains (excellent breeding grounds for various breeds of mosquitoes) is no better.

To illustrate the point, here is a picture of one of the innumerable canals that traverse the city. They are carriers of all kinds of waste and sewage, winding their way across sedately. Most of them act as hosts to the infamous ’African Paayal’ a noxious weed that has been the scourge of Kerala’s waterways for long.

The recent rains have added to the generally low volume of water in these canals.

If the rains continue to lash the state for the next few days, expect to see a new version of ‘Waterworld’ out here, starring the likes of Aedes Egypti, Anopheles etc.

The world indeed has become very small and easily accessible thanks to the state of  the art travel options and telecommunication facilities, which  keep us all  well connected. These days , traveling between continents might not take more than a few hours. There are video conferencing facilities and internet phones that help you to remain in touch with your loved ones always!  However once we step out of these colourful and exciting virtual world to the real world, things get murkier and  dull. This phenomenon is not just rampant in ,metros like Mumbai and Delhi but in small States like Kerala as well!

This incident came as a rude shock and an eye opener  of sorts to me. The venue was a chic coffee shop at the heart of the city of Cochin and  I had been there to grab my  customary steaming cuppa of coffee where I  bumped into  one of my old pals who at present is  working in a  high profile, multinational IT company in Infopark at Kakkanad in  a senior position. After having a quick update about our friends and the latest happenings around, he decided to introduce his gang of colleagues who was with him. I moved a step closer and exchanged warm hand shakes.  Then suddenly I saw my friend  fumbling and trying hard to recollect the names of his colleagues who  spend nearly 8-9 hours with him every day all  round the year!

Though we all sit very close, at a nudging distance from our colleagues at our work desks, are we cocooned in a reclusive space,  shut off from the outside world and its happenings? The work pressures and the mad pace of the modern life have made us all badly self centered and mechanical. Will there be a way out at all from this vicious circle?

The by-election are over and results declared in three constituencies; Ernakulam, Alappuzha and Kannur. The last three day it was mixed reaction as to which party will make it to the hot seat. The voters turnout reported was about 72.99 per cent. Kerala has this history were you have either the UDF or the LDF no other alternative. So who wins the election was a big question, but many knew who will make this time. A recent survey by the Intelligence Bureau sources also read – Congress will win in all the three places.

Both the LDF and the UDF had taken the by-election on war footing, the LDF was under pressure to convert the verdict into their favour after being washed off in the previous election. I personally believed that LDF had not even a remote chances of making it this time again (Am glad that my ‘prophecy’ proved right).   It will not be a huge margin, but still the UDF will have lot to celebrate after the election results are declared.

Having done nothing much for the welfare of the people, the optimism that the LDF was pretending to have could not be justified. It was really fun watching how these candidates went around claiming ‘how that they will change the world. People realise or may have started realising that LDF policy is all about filling their coffer. At some places people had boycotted the election totally. The LDF policy is a bane to the people, they are elite goons with laws to shield their henchmen favoring them. Undemocratic way to keep their bells ringing like; putting legal controls and gag the media. At one instance the Kerala Home Minister wanted to give power to the police and summon media men who comes up with investigative or sensitive reports, but it never worked. Its interesting to see that LDF always have something to say after the defeat, tomorrow when they analyse the results they might say ‘people lost faith in LDF due to outside influences’, I mean its so silly of them.

Oh gaaad, I’ve never been bored like this before. Sometimes it is so hard to get out of this rut. It hits me when least expected. After a long week, it was time for me to sit back and take rest, do something like- reading books, talking, outing or watching a movie( if the hostel warden allows!) So as usual i got up, went through my morning habits, had a little bit of fun with my roomies and waited for the movie time, as all my friends were out of town and no books left to read, i planned to watch a movie. But lol!here comes the most non sorted problem in Kerala, POWER FAILURE. I felt so bad and cursed the government for putting up all the regulations and went up to my room murmuring under my breath.

What to do next, i sat for sometime looking through the magazines and here comes a topic, BOREDOM. I quickly became conscious and started reading the whole thing and understood that once it sets in, then your senses go numb. One fails miserably in a lot of things for mind is elsewhere. The wound is not healed and rather blocks our neurons ending, which in fact stops sending signal of pain to the brain. So, we do not feel the razor sharp scrapping of our nerves when one is in pain. It also inflicts us, as in a way its pangs subdue us and we are totally insensitive to our surroundings, the presence of others and even their feelings at work. So what is to be done is simply break-out of it! Dont be terrified of boredom. Reading through all this, i felt i should check out for some other leisure than my usual stuff and just be fresh , so that I dont feel stressed out in front of my colleagues at work. So i got dressed up quickly, went to the park, took a stroll, had some nuts, thought about the many things I need to do in the following days and came back totally relieved and energetic thinking ‘HOW A BOOK CAN INSPIRE ME’.

The elections came and went and as we wait for the results I recall an incident that happened in Calicut. The ruling UDF decided to call upon Mamukoya (a.k.a Gafoor ka dost – a famous role he played as a cheat! ), the famous comedian of Malayalam cinema to entertain the crowd and to coax them  into voting for their candidate. Calling a local celebrity is a ruse the world over and in India, the religion or the community the celebrity represents, plays an important part in the decision-making. Mamukoya is a Muslim and Calicut has a large Muslim population.

Mamukoya has entertained people all over Kerala with his humour and the people of Calicut hold him in high regard. There are so many jokes made with him as the central character that he has attained quite a following. The man famous for his uneven protruding teeth was once asked by a film  scribe, “Sir, your teeth defines you, can you say something about it?” Pat came the reply, “my teeth were like jasmine buds when I was a child”. The reporter was smirking when he asked, “but sir what happened to them?” Mamukoya famously said, “like all buds… they bloomed”

Coming back to Mamukoya and his election speech… The stage was set and the UDF guys in their famous ‘white and white’ khadi clothes shone brightly as white as Mamukoya’s teeth were all looking forward to the great man’s entertaining speech. Amidst all the false promises and taking credit for all the developments that happened they awaited for Mamukoya’s humour and for him to end with a note to vote for their candidate.

Mamukoya began by calling out to his townspeople in the local style in his thick Calicut slang. The crowd went into raptures, he told the crowd to calm down and unlike his usual self went on to give a ‘teepori prasangam‘- a fiery speech. He spoke about the UDF and their promises which were not kept, recalled each and everything about the previous election and even went on to tell the people to NOT VOTE for the present candidate or for the UDF!

The red-faced UDF guys did not know what hit them. The crowd was in tears laughing and the reporters had a field day. Needless to say that was Mamukoya’s last election speech. The UDF guys still shiver like leaves when they recall the incident. Gafoor ka dost was indeed a Brutus, a Judas!

The new gen kids in Kerala have long ceased to speak pure Malayalam, their mother tongue thanks to the high profile residential school education and NRI status tagged to most of the families. Most of the kids speak “ Manglish”, which in local parlance means poor  quality Malayalam with a rich smattering of English. The parents and the teachers do not seem to bother even when the students  use the Malayalam words and phrases  wrongly!

The present schooling system allows the students to select any second language of their choice and Malayalam is not compulsory. It is ironical to note that in many schools in Kerala there are more students learning French and Sanskrit than their mother tongue of Malayalam! While our neighbouring  States like Tamilnadu and Karnataka, are putting  special emphasis on promoting and propagating their mother tongues, are we lagging behind?  It goes without saying that this strange phenomenon has created a shortage of manpower that can handle Malayalam fluently and the Government is planning to set this anomaly right before things go out of control.

The Kerala Chief Minister opined that steps would be taken to make the proficiency in Malayalam mandatory during the recruitment process for State Government Jobs. The Government might have to bring out a new piece of legislation to change the existing PSC guidelines and recruitment policies in this regard. There could be separate sections for questions in Malayalam in qualifying examinations or the Government can make it compulsory to clear the qualifying language test before the probation period. It is high time that we start loving our mother tongue just like many of the successful nations like Japan or Korea, where people take pride in conversing in their mother tongue all the while being successful in the global arena.