Feb 15, 2022. Updated: Aug 14, 2023.

My Cultural Return

I had been an excellent student to our education system, so much so that until my late 20s, I was what I now call as culturally lost, where I considered western culture superior to my own in many ways. And as a consequence, although I am an extrovert and fitted well in most social spaces, this attitude prevented my true potential of being social.

Sometime around my mid-20s, I started seeing cultures not through the lens of superiority and inferiority, but through the lens of practicality, functionality and suitability. My love for systems and designs must have played a role too. By late 20s, I accelerated my return to my roots¹, and my living in my hometown at that time made this teaser. This post is a memoir of my experiments and experiences of my cultural return.

I started wishing "namaskaram" and "namaste" instead of the usual good morning, afternoon or evening wishes. Over a period of time, these wishing became my second nature of wishing, especially when speaking in Indian languages. However, few Indians found it difficult to acknowledge and wish back in the same manner at the beginning, but soon they returned the wish appropriately. Some just froze as if they never heard that word before. Others, strangely, responded with a good morning or evening wishes.

While writing emails to Indians, I experimented addressing people as Shri and Shrimati, and wishing Namaste and Namaskaram. But almost all replies started with 'Hi' or "Dear" and ended with 'Regards'. It is not surprise as this is what we are taught to be formal communication etiquettes. Nonetheless, with Indians, I continued with the Indian way of greeting and closing.

I made stupid mistakes too. Before addressing people as Shri and Shrimati in emails, I experimented addressing my fellow Malayāḷi as 'x chechi' or 'y chetta'. These phrases were the cultural way of addressing people. But I never realised then how off and informal they sounded in an email, especially when emailing someone you aren't so familiar with. Looking back, this particular experimentation was an extremely stupid, but a very educative one.

In fact, I risked a lot professionally with my re-culturalisation campaign. I was working on some business ideas at that time and I needed to interact and negotiate with many professionals. My lack of proficiency in speaking Malayāḷam and Garo formally put me at risk of being evaluated as someone "unprofessional", "not confident" or simply a "bad speaker" in the professional world where the status quo was the English language. The temptations to use English and convey the message was enormous. But I carried on. I needed that professional exposure to improve my language. At the very least, it put me in that learning momentum.

I faced the same risk (and still face it) with my ethnic formal clothing for business meetings. Many fail to realise that ethnic and formal are not mutually exclusive attributes and they can exist together.

I was so determined to gain proficiency in Malayāḷam that I decided to articulate formal subjects such as business plans in Malayāḷam. One such conversation with my cousins would backfire unknown to me. Years later, during an evening get together, one of my cousins would tell me that my business proposition was boring and never to the point. My business plans indeed takes time to grasp because I plan it as a system; but my proficiency in Malayāḷam at that time played a more damaging role.

I experimented with conveying birthday, congratulatory and anniversary wishes in Malayāḷam itself. This was an easy adoption because wishes in Malayāḷam go in flow with the language, but I was often thanked back in English.

I was brought up in the culture of addressing my parents as mummy and papa — that was the "standard" way. Although I had occasionally called them a'ai and baba (Garo words for mom and dad) during my childhood, I had never called them amma and achā — the Malayāḷam words for mom and dad. Now we were living back in Kerala and Malayāḷam was becoming my primary language. So, I experimented addressing them as amma and accha for a few days, but it felt off. It didn't make me feel that I was calling my parents, perhaps because the words mummy and pappa had already established an emotional association. So, I reverted to calling them as mummy and papa. An improvement is that I could refer them as amma and achan in conversations with someone or saving their contact without the "off" feeling.

A child must be be taught to call their parents and other relations in his or her mother tongue. Amma and acha reflect a more intimate and caressing relationship than mummy and papa because of cultural integrity. The words themselves don't have any intrinsic intimacy or caressing, but they reflect these emotions extremely well because of the cultural integrity. You can circumvent this by Englishifying almost everything associated with our life, but this makes your family sort of an alien in the society; which can be circumvented by Englishifying your entire society, but this make your society the odd one from the rest; which can be circumvented by Englishifying further outward until you kill your language. Now, we are back at square one.

Moving on, I placed certain emphasis in speaking technical words in Malayāḷam (or Garo when applicable) during conversations. I also noted down the English words I used in my non-English conversations and later figured out their counterparts. I also realised that since languages has their own way of sentence structure, one cannot simply use a translated word to in place of the other. You must dig deeper into the language to come up with the right word for it. The best way to expose yourself to vocabulary is to constantly watch debates, interviews, talks and speeches in that language. Proficiency takes time.

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I was already wearing mundu as an occasional dress. It was only after I made an active transition to wearing it regularly (due to the humid Kerala weather), that I realised the comfort, versatility², practicality and economic efficiency that it offers. Clothes that are wrapped around the waist are perhaps the most comfortable and convenient because they interact with less body area, or surface area. They are even good for light running if folded up because your crotch is free allowing the free movement of your legs, and it is not as body hugging and heavy as trousers and jeans are (unless you are taking part in an athletic competition — in which case even a trouser is extremely inconvenient, and you must rely on sporting garments).

So, as a counter to the popular saying that when in Rome you must dress like a Roman, I would say that when in Rome, besides wearing foreign dresses to blend in, or for cultural exchange, and if the weather allows, I will dress like a Malayalee, and wear a mundu for its comfort and practicality.

Many of my Malayalee friends who grew up unaccustomed to mundu fear its unravelling at the wrong time. Wearing mundu is a skill that can be mastered only through continuous practice. And once you get the hang of it, it stays there for a long time without loosening or unravelling. The tuck is so reliable that you would pull up your trousers or adjust its crotch more often than re-tucking mundu.

The move to mundu only asserted my belief that cultural elements are well integrated with each other, like parts of an engine. Mundu does not have pockets forcing you to depend on the pockets of your upper body clothing. Even the two pocketed shirts cannot match the size, comfort, convenience security and practicality offered by the two side pocketed jubbas, because of the placement of the pockets. The design of mundu and jubha evolved to complement each other just like shirts and trousers complemented each other.