136 chapter
Humboldtia brunonis in Kerala was named Humboldtia brunonis raktapushpa by
researchers who identifi ed the plant because of the plant’s red fl owers (Udayan,
Tushar and George 2007). Th e researchers who identifi ed this species—which
was already known to the local community where it was found—were work-
ing for the Centre for Medicinal Plants Research of the Arya Vaidya Sala, the
large ayurvedic pharmaceutical manufacturer and research center in Kottakkal
discussed in Chapter 2. Th is example hints at a common interest in plants in
ayurveda and religious healing in Kerala. Although the understanding may be
ritual-symbolic in one realm and physiological in the other, there is occasional
overlap as in the case of the ayurvedic medicine brahmi, which is given to the
affl icted at Chottanikkara. Th e ingestion of plants may, in turn, have implications
that are simultaneously physiological, ritualistic and symbolic.- English words commonly appear in Malayalam discourse, but using the English
word “change” rather than some form of māruka is somewhat unusual. As a
schoolteacher, Sreedevi’s mother would be expected to have some profi ciency in
English, and she may have been trying to impress me and Biju or make her story
easier for me to follow. - A priest or pastor—from a Malayalam word achchan that translates as “father”
and refers to a male cleric of any Christian denomination. - With a national average of 9.9 suicides per 100,000 people in India in the 1990s,
Kerala had an astonishingly high suicide rate of 28 per 100,000, the highest of
any Indian state and almost twice as high as the state with the second highest
rate (National Crime Records Bureau 1994: 58). Kerala’s high suicide rate seems
to relate to a gap between high educational attainment and the lack of com-
mensurate jobs and possibly other social processes involved in secularization and
“modernization” in the state (Halliburton 1998). - Saith (1992: 114–115), Th omas Isaac (1997), Th e Hindu (April 10, 1997) and
Waldman (2003). - As Osella and Osella observe, “In popular fi lms and plays, the returning gulfan is
invariably portrayed arriving by taxi from the airport, the car loaded with boxes
and parcels. He wears a designer shirt, white trousers and the latest sports shoes.
He smokes foreign cigarettes and wears Ray-Ban sunglasses.... He is a man
about town... He pays very large dowries for the marriage of his sisters, and,
when he marries, receives a large dowry” (2000b: 123). - See Carstairs and Kapur (1976: 66), Nichter (1981: 5) and Weiss et al. (1986: 380).
- E. T. Mathew observed that from the foundation of the state of Kerala in 1956
until 1990–91, enrollment has increased 77% in primary education, 591% in sec-
ondary education, and 1,518% at university level (1997: 102). - In the last three lines of this passage, Lakshmi is using the inclusive form of
“we” and “our” here (nammal/nammalute) in which the person or persons being
addressed is included in the “we” (literally, “our body” here means the body of
Lakshmi, Biju and everyone she is speaking to, as if they collectively possessed
a single body, and she is describing an experience where her interlocutors were
not present). Th e inclusive “we” in Malayalam establishes a solidarity between
speaker and listener and is characteristic of the socially embedded “self ” that is
shaped by everyday discourses and practices in Kerala. - Also, a study by Gulati (1983) claimed that the incidence of mental illness was
higher in areas of Kerala that had the highest rates of Gulf migration.