Proxy mallu

I am a Malayalee and I have lived all my life in Uttar Pradesh with just some sporadic

visits twice all my life to strangers I hardly remember and now I will have to study here.Well I was told that Kerala is a much better place than Delhi ,men respect women more and people are much more decent here,I thought to myself in consolation I might love it here after all.

I call myself a proxy mallu cos all my life thanks to the conspicuous dark color I have been ostracized on more than enough occasions and labeled as "Madrasi".Madras is the old name of Chennai which is the capital of a state called Tamil Nadu and no mallu would consider it less than an insult to be called that.South India actually is Madras to most North Indians,I bet they don't know that there are four states which constitute the other half of this country-Karnataka,Andhra Pradesh,Tamil Nadu and Kerala and each of them are as different form each other as Gujarat is from UP or Punjab is from Bihar.

What made it worse was that mimicry of south Indians was more loud when I was around and the only dance I could participate in extra curricular was south Indian one,no-one would even consider me doing any north Indian dance forms though i was born and bred here.It's a weird feeling of belonging nowhere,the place I am in doesn't recognize me and the place they think I am from I don't even know much about it.So who really decides where I belong?

In India after name the obvious question that follows is where are you from? which sums up the attitude people have towards regions.To these questions I have developed my own answer that suits me .."I belong nowhere I am an Indian.My Parents are malayalees, I was born and brought up in UP." To such strong statement people usually react by saying favorable comments ,the north Indian says "Then you are ours only ", and a South Indian says" Oh you are obviously ours".

And thus sympathy,empathy and sometimes courtesy has ruled which way people react to me but very recently i got a very apt term to define what I am -Proxy Mallu. Proxy is a common term that we use in college lingo as someone being present in spite of being actually being somewhere else at the same time;clearly defines my state.

So I am a Proxy -Mallu,this blog is dedicated to everyone who belongs to God's own country and still feels like God abandoned them when it comes to Identity ;the day our parents or grandparents decided to move out to greener pastures our destiny was written.Not that they were at fault ,Kerala is a communist state where hardly jobs pay the rent and afford a decent lifestyle ,if any there is in Kerala.So they did it for us, to increase country's GDP by 4% by going to gulf and definitely decreasing the population problem,there would be no place in the world where you wont find a Mallu.

But Politically I am Malayalee Diaspora- its a term used for a group of people of a particular ethnicity who move on to different territories but keep their practice alive.So I think I ll have to go with that for now,what if tomorrow I marry then who should i choose? A Malaya lee just cause the diaspora has to become a epidemic or someone my North Indian thought process matches with or someone who is in the diaspora unwillingly just like me.

Its a question which baffles many of us in this generation of movers and settlers but what makes us stand out is the exposure of a very wide and distinct two different facets of this great country and the freedom to inculcate what we please and ignore what we despise.It works for me cos being a Mallu I get to go to the most beautiful place in the country and still be aware and exposed to the land of opportunity.

To my next generation,whichever Diaspora they may be accused of belonging to I am proud I am passing on much better combination of virtues and vices and they will be at the helm of improving it further.

Proxy mallu

By: Deepa Pillai

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