CHIMI

 As sorrowful as deaths are, we live in a part of the world, where there is an impending urgency to let the world know of your dear one’s parting. Local newspapers report the death and the very next morning, voracious readers of the obituary columns discover it. This long-standing legacy of local newspapers devoting a full-fledged page to obituary has often got me contemplating how relevant the news of ‘death’ is.  Even after leaving the wretched material world, it would be immodestly innocent to be under the fallacy that the obituary is a random montage put together by the whims and fancies of the editor. It was a rather late discovery that figures (of money) have to be paid for these lifeless figures to figure in your local daily.  As the social prestige meter goes higher, you will be assigned a fairly large space; a mid-life picture of the expired duly placed, a verbally loaded ad-nauseam line with expensive flowers wreathing the matter. The lucky ones will have the sp...

The ominous influx of terrorism cloaking the streets of Kerala is seemingly no more than a mere instance of propaganda for the champions of free speech today as ‘The Kerala Story’ embarks its release on May 5. The trailer depicts the protagonist ‘Shalini Unnikrishnan’ who is manipulated, converted and further identifies herself as an ISIS terrorist. The central concern of the movie, terrorism is well-established within the first twelve seconds of the trailer. With a constitution that enshrines free speech as a fundamental right and a democracy that has been the harbinger to ushering the same, the state has defended on legal and moral grounds its strong anathema to partisan censorship of creative works. The movie has stirred widespread debate within the country, with certain political parties and organizations even demanding a ban on the movie. Certain factions claim the number (32000) of women having been recruited in the ISIS is a highly inflated value, while others seem to be dee...