Malayalam Cinema Stars and their Online Habitats – 1

Pic Courtesy : Shane Waltener

Deeply saddening. This is the one emotion  that comes to mind as you go through the online domains of our actors which are meant to be their online legacies for future generations. Almost all of them come across as something “begun-with-good-intent-with the wrong-tools-and-perspective-before-leaving-it-halfway”. None of them realise  the gravity and importance of the very reason WHY the website is there in the first place. But you can’t blame ALL of them. Most of them seem to be  built as tribute by fans who then employ their own yardsticks when creating them. As a result, all you get are over-the-top fawning and salivating text that sometimes borders on the hysterically bizarre ( which I intent to share as we go along)  with howlers as text and thumbnail photographs in photogalleries that refuse to pop-up.On rechecking you find,ummm..well..that is their set size!

The Most Memorable House Owner in Malayalam Cinema. Ever.

Intricate and innocent – hardly the pair of words you would associate with the quintessential species called the ‘house-owner’ seen in Malayalam movies through the years. In my college years, I spent a great deal of time living in rented houses and had my share of interaction with this species. None of it was heavenly and, if at all I did gain a perspective about them, it wasn’t the least laudatory.

They would fight with you for the rent (inevitably late!), spy on you lest your female friends made it a habit to visit you for socially questionable reasons, and face a barrage of questions every time your mates descended for a raucous party which would shake the neighbourhood and leave everyone’s eardrums in tatters. Life as a tenant was essentially about time spent in pursuit of clandestine arts – how to hoodwink and how to deal with a pest called the ‘house-owner’.