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Last Friday was Onam. In other words, I put on all the kilos I’d shed painstakingly over two months in a single day over a lunch and dinner that included a handful of traditional Mallu dishes along with lots of rice and sambar!

My non-Malayali friends often ask me what we do on Onam day. I tell them we wake up, we eat, then watch Asianet and Surya TV till noon, then eat again, then sleep, then watch some more Asianet and Surya TV till night, eat again and then go to sleep! And that’s also what we do on the Mallu New Year known as Vishu! It’s an age-old ritual and the only modernity that has crept into it is John Logie Baird’s television!

But other than these two festive days, Malayalis generally don’t celebrate what the rest of the country does. I once asked a cousin from Kerala why Mallus don’t celebrate Holi, Diwali, Gokulashtami or, my favourite, Ganpati! “I guess it’s our ego,” he replied. “Besides, we don’t believe in publicly expressing ourselves through celebrations! We don’t want God to really feel so important! Our motto is — so what’s the big deal if you’re God?”That explains why Kerala doesn’t build temples devoted to its favourite actors!

It’s probably the high literacy rate that helps their irreverent attitude towards life. You only have to watch any Malayalam TV channel for proof of how they liberally lampoon Gods, politicians, filmstars and sportsmen. In any other state it would lead to protests, riots and vandalism.

But for a non-Malayali, it’s hard to understand this unexpressive guy from God’s Own Country. You could feed him the most delicious dhansak or rajma-chawal and he will not open his mouth to praise your cooking. The least you will get out of him is a slight nod with a monosyllabic “umm!” You’ll be lucky if that’s followed by “kuzhappamilla…not bad!”

The fact is, it’s hard to impress a Malayali. Call him blunt or cynical, he will deflate your ego in a matter of seconds. Like, I was introduced to an elderly family friend recently as a Mallu who’s been involved in the scripting of three Bollywood hits in the last year and half. With a smug expression on his face, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “But those movies weren’t hits because of their scripts! In fact, I heard they were badly written!”

Well, truth hurts!