114 chapter
became very “active.” I had the ability and self-confi dence to undertake anything.
Still now, even when I took the papers from the agency and went to distribute
them in the morning at 5 am, after that, while I was doing this, I started a shop,
hoping to “progress” and to start a book stall in front of the shop and an agency
offi ce. I borrowed money for the shop.
Abdul-Rahman’s homesickness is understandable given that in southern
India one’s “native place,” or nātu (sometimes transliterated nadu), plays an
important role in the construction of personhood. Attachment to place is, of
course, not unique to South India, but the Malayalam language and people’s
everyday discourses of identity feature explicit and pronounced articulations
of relations to place. Nātu has no clear equivalent in English and is usually
translated as “native place,” referring to the town or region one is originally
“from,” usually a birthplace or a place that one primarily identifi es with as hav-
ing contributed to one’s essence—or “substance-code” to use Marriott’s (1976)
term that attempts to transcend what he sees as Western dichotomies of form/
substance and actor/action. Th is place attachment is not only sentimental, but
can also be visceral, physical and “biological” in the sense that it relates to South
Indian views of the body, material substances and the relations between these.
Daniel (1984), in a work that is infl uenced by Marriott’s non-dualistic view of
the self and “substance-code,” claims that people in the state of Tamil Nadu (the
name of the state contains the word nātu/nadu), which borders Kerala, have a
visceral attachment to their native town or land. Th ey feel that the substance
that makes up their selves, their bodies and their character also exists in the land
of their native place, in, for example, the soil and the food it produces. I heard
similar sentiments from people in Kerala. In fact, Abdul-Rahman speaks of
home in connection to food. He explained regarding his return to Kerala after
working in Bombay, “As soon as I reached home... right away I had food and
saw everyone.” Ayurvedic medicine and lay medical knowledge assert that the
qualities in the soil of a place are also present in the food and in the bodies
of people from that place. When people in Kerala meet, they quickly inquire
about the other’s “place” (nātu or sthalam), and they often use place names to
further identify themselves in the way North Indians and North Americans use
last names or family names. Srivastava (2005), however, argues that in South
Asian studies claims of attachment to place are overstressed to the exclusion of
discourses of itineracy and mobility, which are also central in Indian cultures.
Th e meaning of nātu and the ayurvedic theories of soil and substance should
not necessarily be seen, therefore, as indicating an immutable sense of attach-
ment or as exclusive discourses about relations to place. Many Malayalis move
away from Kerala for a long period, or permanently, and do not experience the
same reaction to displacement that Abdul-Rahman describes.