Kothaazham - God's own jokeland

I think every country; every state has some community which becomes victims of jokes. In India it is sardars. But there are communities in every state in India that has become joke victims. But some times some area or village is also known for its foolish people. I don’t know whether anybody has done some research into this. In Kerala there are some traditional communities that have many jokes attributed to them. Namboothiri ( or Namboodiri or Namboothirippad)) community is one of the prominent communities in this category. The other is Panickers – I mean rasi panicker - the astrologers. There could be some other as well which I do not know. But there is an area in Kerala where jokers come from and that is none other than our beloved KOTHAZHAM. But where is kothazaham ? Kothazaham is known to be a sleepy village somewhere in central Travancore. No good research is done to trace it. Perhaps our Universities are full of people from ‘that’ village so they find there is no need for a PhD in that category.

Mr. N.B.Nair (ANI,Delhi) has said on wikipedia that his village Chirakkadav near Kottayam is actually known as Kothazham. I am not sure of its authenticity. I have posted his article in the comment.

Some people say it is in fact Kottayam, although people from kottayam will vehemently oppose it. No body wants to be known as hailing from a foolish village. So everybody disowned Kothazham and the village disappeared into oblivion. There are many jokes attributed to Kothazham. Even today if someone commits a blunder the question asked is “Ethu kothazhathukarana nee?” ( meaning which Kothazham you belongs to?)

I think it is better to attribute Kerala’s traditional jokes to Kothazham than to any community. So I will apply some of the traditional jokes related to Namboothiries and Panickers to Kothazham besides listing the known Kothazham jokes. I may also try to create some jokes of on my own. If you have any Kothazham joke pls. ket me know. I will publish it here.

Many of these jokes are known to most Keralites. ButI hope this is a good way to showcase Kerala’s traditional jokes to a wider public, people other than Malayalees.

All the drawings in this blog are drawn by me except for this one (mine) which was done by a reputed caricature artisit of Trivandrum.

Enjoy … Read on…