conclusion: pleasure, health and speed 197
number of years of schooling in India and a lack of jobs that are commensurate
with their educational qualifi cations, people in Kerala feel they have to maxi-
mize their education, pursue private tutoring and earn the credentials they need
to beat out other candidates for desirable jobs^1. Computer training certifi cate
programs are popular, and I often cringed at the pressure and expectations put
on young people when I passed a banner advertisement in the middle- and
working-class neighborhood where I lived enticing students to join a com-
puter training program with “Want to emulate Bill Gates?”
When I visited Kerala in 1999, I was happy to learn that a friend and
his wife had obtained coveted government sector jobs, which they had been
seeking for years. However, like many Keralites who fi nd their dream job,
they had to pay a price in time and travel. My friend’s job was in a city that,
when the trains are running on time, was a two-hour commute from his
home where he lives with his two sons. His wife, meanwhile, had begun
working in northern Kerala, nine hours from their home, and she was able
to visit only once every two weeks or so. When I saw this friend in the sum-
mer of 1999, he was waking up around 3:30 am to get his children ready for
school and make it to his job on time. He would return home close to 7 pm,
receive social and professional calls, help his sons with homework and, with
luck, get to bed early enough to get four or fi ve hours of sleep. Needless to
say, he was always burnt out and yearning for more time. Upon learning of
this couple’s work situation, I became aware of others in similar circum-
stances. I was told that increasingly people commute four or more hours
each way from Trivandrum to Cochin to work at a job that is commensurate
with their skills or expectations. A small marketing niche was even form-
ing around this new commuting pattern wherein food sellers jump onto the
women’s cars at the Cochin-Ernakulam train stations to sell vegetables and
other groceries to female commuters who are still responsible for making
dinner after their long journey home. When I last visited this couple in 2005,
they had found jobs closer to home, but had taken on more responsibilities
at work and appeared just as busy as before.
Osella and Osella’s (2000a) ethnography of work and social aspirations
among the Izhava caste (an upwardly-mobile, low caste, working class group)
in a village in central Kerala provides similar observations about contemporary
Kerala lifestyles and pressures. Izhavas align themselves with ideals of “prog-
ress” (this English term having been adopted into everyday Malayalam dis-
course) and put themselves under tremendous pressure to succeed in work and
education in order to obtain consumer items and other symbolic capital that
can help increase their social status. Th is keeps members of the Izhava caste
quite busy, and time pressure is especially acute for working women who are