Toddy, Tea, and Tapioca: Food, Famine, and the Moral Reordering of Public Space in Malabar (Kerala), 1900- 1965

This paper examines how public food and drink spaces in early twentieth-century Malabar functioned as critical infrastructures of everyday subsistence as well as sociability. It argues that toddy shops, beyond sites of intoxication, might have provided low-cost nutrition, informal credit, and cross-caste interaction for segments of the labouring poor. Colonial excise policies and temperance movements progressively narrowed these spaces, contributing to the rise of tea shops aligned with reformis