Slices of Kerala Life

The day dawned today in Kerala with papers speaking tonnes about Cochin Haneefa, the popular actor and scenarist-director who passed away yesterday. The television channels were all airing specials on the late actor since yesterday evening itself. It’s of course natural for the media to ‘celebrate’ deaths and disasters in this fashion, especially since we are living in a society where things are decided to a great extent by the media and where TRP rating and circulation matter, much more than ethics. (It was just three days back that I saw Ram Gopal Varma’s movie ‘Rann’, which discusses this issue in a rather sensitive manner). We are almost inured to such things and take it all as part of life, essential to the scheme of things around us.

But the eagerness with which our media wanted to announce Cochin Haneefa’s death yesterday took  shameful proportions when most of them came out with the news that the actor was dead, hours before he actually breathed his last at a hospital in Chennai. Yes shameful indeed it is. The thought that the very same people are now singing praises of the late actor fills me with aversion and disgust. The media, who form the ‘fourth estate’ and who are supposed to be responsible and credible, shouldn’t have proclaimed a live man dead in such a manner. They should have verified it at least. Shameful indeed!!

This is the moment when we realize that films like ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’ (Aziz Mirza), ‘Sukritham’ (Harikumar) and ‘Mad City’ (Costa Gavras) are no exaggeration. I am reminded of how the media remained mute spectator to and even shot live the instance of a helpless man who was stomped upon and submerged to death by an mentally ill person in a temple pond in Thiruvananthapuram, some years back. For our media guys who make spies out of innocent visitors and who praise excessively the rich and the powerful, this is just a routine mistake that has occured. But isn’t it madness? Isn’t it cruelty beyond justification?

‘Mad city’ indeed!!