Hon. @ShashiTharoor — please step away from the microbe-mineral anxiety.
We’ve survived quite happily as Malayalees in polite society and Mallus among friends (and in JNU, where it was equal parts tease and term of endearment). A gentle glide from “Kerala” to “Keralam” is not…
All to the good, no doubt, but a small linguistic question for the Anglophones among us: what happens now to the terms “Keralite” and “Keralan” for the denizens of the new “Keralam”? “Keralamite” sounds like a microbe and “Keralamian” like a rare earth mineral…! @CMOKerala might…