What would you choose - B or A or is it A or B?

If A=B and B=A, then if you really want B, but does not want to avoid A, while A being an excellent choice, but B being a great choice, what would you choose? B or A?

Confused are you? So are we, the fellows who love Malayalam but living in Kanyakumari district.

It pains to see the slow but sure disintegration of culture, language and symbols of a once powerful empire. All malayalis of Kanyakumari distict respresent the quotient, which gets divided by zero. Was there are division – yes, Is the result clear – no. Sangamesh’s Varma’s documentary on Kanyakumari district brought tears to my eyes (Part 1, Part 2).

I have been asked many a times that if I were a malayali, by malayalis ofcourse. I ask them back to define a malayali. Would a person born in the geography of Kerala state be a malayali or the one whose mother tounge is Malayalam, learnt Malayalam during school and still have the love for Vallathol, Basheer, MT, Pottekatt, Sugathakumari, Subhash Chandran … is a malayali. If it’s the former, then no, but the latter, then a big fat yes! But then I am a Tamilian as well – as long as I can read and appreciate Kalki, Jeyamohan, Vairamuthu, Jeyakanthan, Ashoka Mithran and so. That’s the best part of being a person from Kanyakumari district – can enjoy the treasures in both these languages. So some things are fuzzy and not 1 or 0.

Then obviously it will be a problem if the authorities choose to go with one, while some of the natives decide to stick with what they love. This is what is happening in KK district. Infact most of the natives love both – especially during pre 1956. Jeyamohan absolutely portrays (in his book Uravidangal and Remitha speaks bout the ozhimuri effect) the actual mental picture of a KK native, by referring the influence of both the languages to their culture and probably developing a new one, with roots on both the languages. Isn’t that how new cultures develop? Then why wouldn’t the authorities let the development of a new culture, if the natives are happy with it? With all the demand for new states gathering attention, sometimes I feel that we should redraw the maps and get ourselves declared as a Union Territory.