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Journalism of Courage
Bollywood has always had a way of turning people into props. You don’t need to know a state, its language, or its culture — you just need a lungi, a fake accent, and a few jokes about coconuts.
The latest flashpoint is Param Sundari. Technically, the phrase means “eternal beauty,” but in Bollywood, eternal usually lasts about three minutes of an item song. The real kicker, though, is the heroine’s name: Thekkapetta Sundari Damodaran Pillai. Now, to someone in Mumbai, this probably sounds exotic and lyrical. In local slang, “thekkapetta” means “betrayed beauty.” Imagine making a grand, dramatic entrance only to declare yourself “Miss Betrayed”. That’s Param comedy. Unfunny. My sense is they wanted to write, and say, “Thekkeppatte” in place of “Thekkapetta”, in which case, it would have made sense. I won’t explain this, ask your Malayali friends.
Visuals, naturally, are straight out of the “South Indian starter pack.” Jasmine flowers pinned in the hair, women dancing Mohiniyattam like it’s cardio, endless backwaters with conveniently parked houseboats. Apparently, every Malayali woman wakes up, attaches a garland, does some classical twirls, and rows to the office. Forget IT hubs, startups, and airports — the stereotype is that we’re basically extras in our own tourism ad.
Out of all the actresses in Kerala — and there are plenty who can act, dance, and, minor detail, actually speak Malayalam and Hindi — Bollywood decided to hand the role to Janhvi Kapoor. Which would be fine, except her accent in the teaser was so far off that Malayalis had to watch it twice: once to figure what she said, and again to confirm a new dialect was invented. It’s not her fault entirely — she’s doing what she was directed to — but it begs the question: are Malayali actors invisible to Bollywood unless they play villains or sidekicks?
But here’s the thing: stereotyping doesn’t just happen in cinema. It also happens in love. And if you’re a Malayali man dating women from North India, you quickly realise you’ve been typecast in roles you never auditioned for.
Take food. On one of my first dates in Delhi, the woman asked me with genuine curiosity: “So… you eat rice three times a day?” I told her yes. And sometimes four. If rice were a religion, Malayalis would be born-again believers. For many north Indians, rice is convalescent food — something you eat when you have a fever. For us, it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, and if you’re lucky, dessert in the form of payasam.
And the shock doesn’t stop there. Once, when I ordered appam and stew at a restaurant, the woman across the table whispered, “So… you don’t eat naan at all?” As if naan were Aadhaar, and my life was incomplete without it.
There’s also the mundu problem. More than one woman has looked at me with mild disappointment when I showed up in jeans. They seemed to expect me to arrive in a crisp white mundu, folded up at the knee, ready to perform a Mohanlal monologue. To them, my denim felt like a betrayal of character — like Spider-Man showing up without his costume.
The mundu stereotype runs deep. At a party in Delhi, when I actually did wear one, a friend’s date whispered, “Is this cosplay?” For Bollywood, a mundu is a joke. For us, it’s formalwear. For everyone else, apparently, it’s Comic-Con.
The language test is another classic. “Say something in Malayalam,” a woman once requested, eyes sparkling as though I was about to perform a magic trick. I did. “Why does it sound like you’re scolding me?” she asked. Fair question. Malayalam is one of those languages where even an “I love you” can sound like a traffic violation.
Coconut jokes are, of course, inevitable. “Do you put coconut in literally everything?” I’ve been asked more times than I can count. The answer is yes. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. One woman asked if my shampoo had grated coconut in it. At this point, I don’t even fight it. Coconut is Kerala’s brand ambassador, whether we like it or not.
Geography is another pain point. “So Kochi is in Tamil Nadu, right?” a woman once asked casually. “Yes,” I said, “Like Mumbai is in Meghalaya.” I wished I hadn’t said that. Some truths are too complicated to explain in the middle of a date. I ordered a filter coffee and moved on.
Dating also comes with political assumptions. “Do all Malayalis argue about communism on the first date?” one woman asked. I told her no — only on the second date, and that too, only if the restaurant bill is unfairly distributed. Another woman once asked if I carried a “red” flag in my backpack. I told her no, just banana and jackfruit chips.
All of this might sound funny — and it often is. But it also points to why Bollywood’s stereotypes sting. Because what’s harmless curiosity can quickly turn into flattening. You stop being Vivek, the individual, and become The Coconut Guy. Or The Mundu Guy. Or worse, The Mohanlal-in-training.
And that’s the real issue with Bollywood’s lazy lens. It doesn’t just erase diversity on screen. It trickles into how people perceive us off screen — in classrooms, in workplaces, and yes, even in love lives.
The problem with stereotyping is not that it’s always offensive. It’s that it’s always reductive. Bollywood’s problem is the same as our dating lives — too many roles written by someone who has never actually been to Kerala.
Because here’s the truth. Nobody falls in love with a stereotype. You don’t fall for “the Coconut Guy” or “the Butter Chicken Girl.” You fall for the weird, unpredictable, specific things: the way she fights you for the last piece of appam, the way he orders payasam like it’s life or death, the way both of you laugh at jokes only you find funny.
Bollywood will keep stereotyping us, but love has to do better. If cinema reduces people to props, at least in relationships, we should resist the lazy script. Or else, we’ll all be stuck with the world’s worst sequels.
