On reading this posting, I couldn’t help but remember someone I met a couple of months back.
"Are you a malay-alee?" Mildly shocked, I turned to see this slightly curious white man. I was happy. For once, someone had recognized me as a Malayalee and that someone wasn’t even an Indian. I am usually mistaken for a Tamilian/ Andhra-ite. Not that I have anything against them, its just that I am proud to be a Malayalee.
Coming back to the slightly curious white man… Now, I was totally shocked. It turned out that he wasn’t merely curious. He was actually learning the language – Malayalam, through a South Asian Languages Program at the University of Texas. On his first visit to India, he somehow managed to fall in love with just the sound of this wonderful language and ever since, he’d been collecting resources to learn it. He was a bit disappointed to know that I could only speak the language and didn’t know to read or write it. He readily gave me the phone number and address where I could place an order for the textbook he was using - Malayalam: A University Course and Reference Grammar. We spoke for a while about Kerala and its culture. He was also planning his second trip to India, this time just Kerala. He seemed to know a lot more about the small state, than I expected.
A little embarrassed about my ignorance of the language, I thanked him for the number and came back home intrigued by this man’s genuine interest in a distant land. He was not the first American I met, who knew or liked India so much. There was something more. I haven’t seen him after that. Think he’s moved from the building or maybe, he’s in God’s Own Country.
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