22 chapter
Kerala, “God’s Own Country”
Looking out the window of a plane descending toward the airport in
Trivandrum,^12 the capital city of the south Indian state of Kerala, I could see
only a few buildings peeking above the thick growth of trees. It was impossible
for me to discern a city of one million. Stretching along the Malabar coast of
southern India, Kerala is in many ways a lush, tropical paradise, overgrown
with coconut trees and blessed with beautiful beaches, but it is also one of the
most densely populated states in one of the most densely populated countries
in the world. Promoted as “God’s Own Country” by the state tourist develop-
ment board, Kerala has lured tourists to its backwater boat tours and ecotourist
resorts that often feature “new-age” style reinventions of local medical practices,
such as “ayurvedic massage.” But this image belies the stressful modern, urban
reality that commingles with tropical scenery in much of the state.
Like the tourists who sought “ayurvedic massage,” I saw India as a possible
source of novel medical insights, but I wanted to delve beyond the superfi -
cial and suspiciously neat depictions of ayurveda and other healing practices
off ered by much of the media in India and the West. I had come to Kerala to
learn about the methods used for treating mental illness and the experience
of people who undergo these treatments. Kerala is an ideal setting to exam-
ine these issues since the state has several elaborated, institutionalized forms
of treatment for psychopathology that are broadly available. Th e comparative
perspective brought by patients who use these therapies provides important
insights into the nature of “mental” illness, the process of healing, and the
character of mind, body, self relations that are not apparent in settings that are
dominated by one system of healing.
Some in Kerala back the state tourism department’s promotion of the
state as “God’s Own Country,” an assertion about the lush physical beauty
and ritual color of the state, while others see this as pretentious. Kerala is
certainly colorful and alluring, but it is also crowded, stressful and affl icted
by social problems that persist along with impressive achievements in edu-
cation, health and social justice. What many Malayalis say about Kerala is
that it is like Bengal, which is located at the other end of India, with several
languages and cultures in between. Malayalis and Bengalis love seafood, eat a
lot of coconut and enjoy soccer, while most Indians are solely cricket de votees.
Malayalis also claim that their culture has produced signifi cant fi gures in
literature and fi lm, and like the state of West Bengal, Kerala has repeatedly
elected communist governments.
People in Kerala hold up their food as particularly emblematic of their
identity. Th e rhetorical equivalent of “How are you?” when people meet in