B-Log

Jagathi Sreekumar, the actor has retired for the time being. A motor accident has wrecked havoc with his mind. He has travelled beyond the din of the actual into a calm of the within. He goes through the motions. Let us hope that there will be more light at the end of the tunnel, that the comedian nonpareil for the Malayalees will return us to quality laughter.  Quality laughter is a complex term, as it is a slippery feel. if humour is the process and laughter the product, as the theorists say, then quality laughter must be the result of quality humour.  The blank which Jagathy has left behind is a yawning divide in the lives of the average Keralite who loved a good laugh, but rarely at the expense of the female of the species. The miss of the real is felt when we have to live with the kind of replacements which have materialised in the guise of comedians. When the quintessential humour gives way to pedestrian buffoonery, pathos of the viewer bring the m...

Ads have ad-on value. Or they should. Considering the quantum of time of a television viewer or a magazine reader that ads snatch away, it should have. The other day exigency tied me down to a channel. Having left the remote kilometres away, forgetfulness turns the clock back by a decade kind of. Since mobility has been mortgaged to the couch potato pleasure, there was the unease of having to get up to escape ads. Rooted to the comfort of the visually sedated, I was exposed to forgettable ads which were, to add to the insult, repeated. One ad paraded an experiment. A washing competition in which a surf Excel wins hands down. An ad which makes one take a look at the calendar to check the century one belongs to! Another one had three creams from three countries and the the one for which the ad is made won it lock, stock and barrel. These were repeated twice or thrice during each break. For a viewer who is already taxed by the effort having to watch a movie which stretches the limits...