[Author’s Note: I wrote this in 2008. I have slightly edited it for clarity but otherwise left it unchanged.]
Were you on a summer trip to Kerala? I bet things looked a whole lot different from your previous visit, even if you had been there just last year. And if you have been out of the state sufficiently long, you would be awed by the changes compared to how things were ten or twenty years back.
I am not talking about the politicians and their steadfast commitment to civil dismemberment. That's a sure bet you can count on to stay the same in Kerala. The good ol’ pols are as reliable as ever, sticking to their mendacious schemes, putting roadblocks—literally and figuratively—in people’s lives, adding misery here and mayhem there. You will still find chaotic lines in front of the electricity office, laborers assigned to weed the collectorate lawn glancing at their Seiko watches as their agricultural instruments wither away from persistent neglect, and state-owned limited-stop fast passenger buses whizzing past, serenading school children with a fresh coat of chocolate-hued monsoon runoff. If these changed, if you couldn’t count on the durable recurrence of minnal hartals (unannounced work stoppages), potholes that could double as pathways to paathalam (the nether world), and the local party committee’s resolution on Iraq war, you’d soon be needing emergency care for a case of acute disorientation. But luckily, these old reliables will give you a steady mooring as you contemplate the vast scale of changes unfolding before you in contemporary Kerala.
I am not talking about the politicians and their steadfast commitment to civil dismemberment. That's a sure bet you can count on to stay the same in Kerala. The good ol’ pols are as reliable as ever, sticking to their mendacious schemes, putting roadblocks—literally and figuratively—in people’s lives, adding misery here and mayhem there. You will still find chaotic lines in front of the electricity office, laborers assigned to weed the collectorate lawn glancing at their Seiko watches as their agricultural instruments wither away from persistent neglect, and state-owned limited-stop fast passenger buses whizzing past, serenading school children with a fresh coat of chocolate-hued monsoon runoff. If these changed, if you couldn’t count on the durable recurrence of minnal hartals (unannounced work stoppages), potholes that could double as pathways to paathalam (the nether world), and the local party committee’s resolution on Iraq war, you’d soon be needing emergency care for a case of acute disorientation. But luckily, these old reliables will give you a steady mooring as you contemplate the vast scale of changes unfolding before you in contemporary Kerala.
One change you’d surely notice is the sheer increase in wealth and the money people spend. As you reluctantly hand over the credit card to charge your wife’s fleetingly final addition to her sari wardrobe, you’ll be pushed and shoved by the local throng, who, much to your wonderment, seem to exhibit no such budgetary qualms. Coming soon after being subject to a derisive put-down from the jewelry sales clerk when you asked for the price—“Sir, nobody asks the price these days; where are you from?”—you are left to ponder what changed between the time you left for greener pastures and your present shopping dilemma with a devalued dollar. Things were not supposed to be this way.
You’d return on your vacation with a handful of the almighty dollar, convert to wads of rupees, and stride into the newest emporium hoping to unleash your pent up shopping energy. Or at least that’s what you had led your wife to believe during your e-courtship. You didn’t expect to be weighing your options between satisfying your wife’s sartorial desires and keeping up payment on the home-equity credit line, even as your relatives remind you with a special relish how your 2nd cousin’s brother-in-law is buying spanking new flat in the heart of the town.
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| It's just the beginning |
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| Author taking a break from shopping trips |
But your experience of the new Kerala won’t be limited to being jostled around in shopping malls or being reminded how you have fallen behind by lacking that 2nd apartment. Along with spreading mobile phones, roads choking with autos and SUVs, sprouting cable channels, and booming real estate, Malayalees’ food habits are changing too. Well-stocked local supermarket chains are replacing old mom and pop vegetable vendors. Soon they may face tough competition from corporates like Reliance and Pantaloon retail. Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Subway and other purveyors of fast food are stepping in to cater to the free spending middle class. Eating places from the traditional ‘hotels’ to the new upscale restaurants are doing brisk business. More than likely, many of the stuff you ate at home might also have come from the growing ranks of food preparers—beneficiaries of KPO, kitchen process outsourcing, by time-pressed families obsessed with keeping current on reality TV shows.
If wealth comes can girth be far behind? These fast-spreading changes in the way Malayalees eat are showing up front and back. According to findings from the National Family Healthy Survey conducted in 2005-06, Kerala has among the highest proportion of overweight or obese women (28 percent) and men (18 percent), just behind Punjab, which tops the obesity scale. For women, the figure is up from 21 percent overweight or obese in 1998-99.
But, you ask, haven’t we seen all this before? You are right. Many of the changes, particularly of the weighty kind, that at first look jarring when you see it in Kerala, have been playing out right here on the States side. In a span of three decades, Americans have added quite a bit of heft such that today, over two-thirds of men and women are overweight or obese. We immigrants are not far behind in joining the trend line. As we assimilate and adopt the Western diet, we too shed our wiry selves and meld into the portly melting pot. What we are witnessing in Kerala, Punjab, and on even bigger scale in China and other fast developing regions, is a nutritional side effect of dietary globalization.
Having more to eat is of course far more preferable than the alternative, which was prevalent only a few decades back. So, on balance, there is more good news than bad. You may have noticed that, in general, children of Kerala today are taller and healthier than a decade or two ago. Drs. KP Aravindan and Anupama Manjula of Calicut Medical College recently surveyed the nutritional profile of children attending 4th grade in Kozhikode district. They compared their contemporary sample with a sample of children studied by CR Soman and KR Soman in 1976. Over the last 27 years, the average height of 9-year old boys has increased by 8.8 cm and those of 9-year old girls by 8.3 cm. This increased stature is not confined to the relatively well-off. Height increased significantly among students in backward areas as well. But even as the Drs. Aravindan and Manjula document the immense progress in the nutritional status of children in Kerala, they end with a note of caution. Nearly 11 percent of children in well-to-do schools are overweight. Public health action to address this trend seems unlikely given more pressing concerns raised by the increasingly regular outbreaks of new types of viral fevers.
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| Author's daughter chasing the land of his memories |
