Good question Saurav.

I think so — learning to understand the language is one thing, but putting words together and actually speaking is a bit trickier.

Anecdotally — I know a lot more Malayalees who can follow Tamil than the other way around.

This could be due to the respective size of their film industries but it could also be because Malayalees have a smaller bridge to cross by only having to learn additional vocabulary rooted in Dravidian words whereas a Tamilian would have to pick up a suite of Sanskrit based words — totally missing in their language.