Dear director Kamal, your tirade against Meera Jasmine is infantile

It’s been four + six years in the making. That’s how long a Malayalam film director took to cook his favourite recipe of khichdi: mansplanation.

(For further reading on mansplanation / mansplaining, check out The Ladies Finger or just google it)

Director Kamal (57) recounts his sweet-and-sour association with actress Meera Jasmine in one article in a series of 41 columns for Madhyamam weekly. Titled “Ente Veyil Njarambile Pachayum Poookalum”, the column has been written along with Unnikrishnan Avala and this is the first time that it is making news for its controversial contents.

The piece details his working relationship with national award winning actress Meera Jasmine, and presents what in journalistic irony would be called “balanced” (the quotation marks to indicate sarcasm): the seven-page piece is almost a tirade against her interspersed with remarks of how good an actress she is, which she supposedly ruined by her own behaviour.

Mansplanation is the only explanation for such a long tirade against a female film personality who isn’t dead and works in an industry where even constructive criticism is unheard of.

Kamal first worked with Meera Jasmine for his film Gramophone which released in 2003. By this time, she was already an actress in her own right. That same year, Kamal released Swapnakkudu which also starred Meera Jasmine.

While shooting for Gramophone, Kamal says that he had warned her “many” times about “misbehaving” with the film’s technicians and assistants. According to him, she said that she could not be friendly with people she did not like. He claims that she tore a dress given to her by the costume designer.

However, the pair appear to have patched up during the final days of the film, by Kamal’s account, because of which he cast her in Swapnakkudu. More complaints follow.

“I have heard that even superstars like Mohanlal had waited for her. Many directors used to complain she was late. Many actresses who had reached greater heights than she did never behaved like this,” Kamal says.

Then, comes Perumazhakaalam released in 2004. The character certificate was better this time. Apparently, she was better behaved. They shared a close relationship then, because he claimed she had family problems and that she cried publicly on stage and that she “shared her pain” a lot.

But the last straw was some years later when he cast her for the film Minnaminnikoottam which was released in 2008. Apparently, a type of soap opera was playing out on the sets of the film because Meera Jasmine and her brother who was the camera assistant for the film did not get along. Or rather, she did not get along with him, Kamal claims.

“By then I had had enough. I told her that that was my last film with her because she was unprofessional, that she mixed her personal issues with her professional life.”

Hmmmmmm… What would Kamal’s long tirade qualify as, one wonders.

Didn’t a senior director like Kamal know that there are many talented actors in Malayalam? Why did he then choose Meera Jasmine, despite her ‘tantrums’? And the bizarre tirade that comes 7 years after their last film together, has left a really bad taste in the mouth.