On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 7:50 AM, Biju Chacko <[email protected]> wrote: >> No! Really? > > How much of this is because of the lack of opportunity and > unemployment in Kerala? I grew up in an alcoholic town that quit its > habit over 2 decades as it gradually made its way out of abject > poverty.
Mallus outside Kerala are also a hard drinking crowd -- especially the amongst the fairly successful IT industry crowd. My guess is that it's a lot about how drinking is viewed amongst Mallus. For most people, alcohol is a lubricant for social occasions. For a smaller group it's an epicurean pleasure. My hypothesis is that for Mallus it's a way of showing off your masculinity. Getting drunk -- especially pukingly drunk -- is something to be proud of. The object of drinking is two-fold: a. To show off your large capacity for alcohol b. To show that you are macho enough to not stop until you cannot drink any more. That's probably why most Mallus I know are either hard drinkers or teetotallers: there's no middle ground. A friend's father, after he retired back to Kerala, made a practice of nursing a single malt every evening while reading a whodunit. He was considered an alcoholic by his neighborhood because no one could accept the he'd actually stop after a single drink. -- b
