Dubai-based singer and RJ Pavithra Menon has called out the makers of Janhvi Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra’s ‘Param Sundari’, for stereotyping Malayali people in the trailer.
Irked by the casting of a non-Malayali actor, Janhvi Kapoor, as Tekhpatta Sundari Damodaram Pillai, a South-Indian lover to a North-Indian guy, Param Sachdev (Malhotra), RJ Pavithra Menon, a Malayali herself, took to her Instagram handle this week to voice her frustration over the long-stereotyped portrayal of the people of Kerala in the Bollywood movies.
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“I’m a Malayali and I watched the trailer of Param Sundari, and want to really address this,” said Menon, who hails from India’s coastal state herself, in a deleted-then-reposted video on her public Instagram handle.
“What’s the problem in hiring a proper Malayali actor? Hum kum talented hote hain kya (Are we any less talented)?,” she went on to ask. “Mohiniyattam hi kar rahi hoti hai. Aisa nahi hota Kerala mein bhai. Jaise ki main baat kar rahi hun, Hindi mein (These heroines are only doing Mohiniyattam, this is not all we do in Kerala. Like I’m talking in Hindi right now), I can also speak Malayalam really well.”
“I mean, is it so hard to find a Malayali to play the role in a Hindi movie?” she questioned again in Malayalam, referring to other similar roles of South Indian women, previously played by Bollywood A-listers Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt in ‘Chennai Express’ and ‘2 States’ respectively.
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“It’s 2025. I think everybody knows how a Malayali talks and how they are as normal as anybody else. We don’t wear just jasmine flowers and do Mohiniyattam everywhere, and walk around the office and house,” she noted. “Please, request hai yaar (it’s a request). Thiruvananthapuram agar aap bol nahi sakte naa toh Trivandrum bol do, hum khush ho jaayenge (If you can’t say Thiruvananthapuram, just do Trivandrum, and we’ll be more than happy).”
Her video has since left the internet divided, with many supporting Menon’s stance, while others used the examples of South-Indian divas, including Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Rashmika Mandanna and Keerthy Suresh, smoothly making their way into Bollywood.
‘Param Sundari’, directed by Tushar Jalota, is scheduled to arrive in theatres on the 29th of this month.
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