Its a funny inside joke that us Malayalees love living / working in any of the Arabian Gulf countries, collectively referred by a majority of us as the ‘Gelf’. In certain areas, large populations of Malayalees just want to get that holy grail – a working visa to places like Muscat, Sharjah or Dubai. They want to live & work in Kuwait or Jiddah and send money home to mom & dad back home and help pay for little sister’s wedding and little brother’s college studies. Almost every family in the district of Malappuram have atleast one male family member who works in a Gulf country.
Yeah we love the Arabs, even named a milk shake after an Arab city – the Sharjah shake. Which I just had about 2.5 hours ago, yummy! We also have plenty of Arabian food cafes strewed throughout the cities in Kerala.
My dad went to Kuwait with his brother and a few others back in the 1960s to make a living and send money back home. He struggled for a few years and was then rewarded for his loyalty (29 years working for a bank), got married to my mom in 68 and raised two kids there. There’s a few thousand versions of him all around. But some guys take it to extremes; they also have a smuggling side business going on. That’s not cool. And you know the difference between families like us and these buggers?
We don’t pronounce it as ‘Gelf’!