Dear Bollywood...

Dear Bollywood,

I am so upset with you. No, not because you churn out one mindless movie after another (that has become acceptable now), with that occasional streak of brilliance in between to save your face. It is because I am deeply hurt and offended by how you misrepresent South Indian-ness in all the crass that you produce.

You know, you occupy a really huge mind-share in Indians, especially upwards of the Vindhyas, much more than you are worthy of. Given that, you ought to be a tad bit more responsible in your portrayal of people and their sensibilities, however funny you may want it to seem. This is long overdue. I have a few things to tell you…

Food: You really touched a raw nerve here. I believe we have way more advanced gastronomical acumen than to consume curd with soy sauce and ajinomoto, and most definitely not with the table manners that you have revoltingly depicted. Curd is our elixir. I would like to invite you home for lunch. I will teach you how we eat our curd rice. It is with this mind-blowing accompaniment called “vadumanga”, which is made during summers and preserved in pickled brine. I should probably arrange to send you some everyday so that the curd goes down your system and cleanses your brains, while the spice of the vadumanga grinds down your thick skin.

People: Our heroes may not have the metrosexuality to lie in a bathtub full of roses to advertise for beauty soaps. They certainly do not have the machismo of revealing butt cracks in hot swimwear either. But I would like to think most of the reigning heroes are comfortably in between, with way more cerebral and creative wealth than yours. So please stop portraying our men like big fat goons with drawn up veshtis, generous visuals of their underwear, abominable mustaches, flashy jewellery and more than abundant body hair. Speaking of body hair, let us rewind a decade or so and take a moment to digest the volume of collective hair of the then Kumars, Kapoors, Deols and the Khans.

About our women, well, the lesser said, the better. I don’t think you have the mental maturity for this discussion as yet.

Language: Let me do you a favour and help you enrich your general knowledge a little bit. We have four states here, each with its own beautiful language. So, one can safely presume that our vocabulary is more advanced than the “Ayyos” / “Aiyyas” and the exaggerated “aaahs”  / “ooohs” that you pepper around your characters, especially in that irritating nasal tone.

I wanted to end this post with a caustic remark on the first and last syllables of your name. Well, I'll just let that be... because it will take you light years to understand the joke.