Starbursts on the Malayalam Screen | Saleema

First off, let us be very clear on this.

The actor who debuted ( Thanks Gopalakrishnan for the update. This is historical ! ) along with Monisha Unni  in Nakhakshathangal (1986)  is Saleema. As in S-A-L-E-E-M-A or S-A-L-I-M-A, depends on how you want to look at it. Not Saleena nor Salina. The emphasis is M, and not N. Vineeth Nambiar had debuted in IV Sasi’s Idanilangal in 1985, so, this ain’t technically his debut film. The one that made him a household name, maybe.

Starbursts on the Malayalam Screen | Suparna ‘Vaishali’ Anand

Four out of five friends stared blankly when I asked for the actor who played the title role in Bharathan‘s eponymous Vaishali (1988), which is also a telling tale on a starburst which was “ooed and aahed”, and then, got neatly packed away in our cinema’s dusty, moldy archives. MT described the film as one of his “good films, though he felt, Bharathan had over-decorated it a bit, maybe because he was a painter“. Other epithets for Vaishali, the film, includes  the “prettiest film” ever made in  Malayalam and Bharathan’s painting in Celluloid, but, one has to acknowldege, there has never been a film, visually dense, exquisitely textured and sensually glowing as Vaishali (1988).