“I have never seen a more innocent bunch of people in my life, than the people of Kannur district. But when they take up arms to kill others, all the attributes crumble,” wrote Malayalam actor Salim Kumar in an emotional post on Facebook, following a series of violent incidents in Kannur in the past few days.
Even as the all-Kerala hartal on Thursday called for by BJP in view of the recent murder of a BJP worker in the politically sensitive Kannur district was near total, the actor took to Facebook to recall the innocent Kannur he once knew.
“This was in 1993, when I was a student of Maharajas college in Ernakulam. I used to work at a company that takes orders for steel almirahs and was posted in Kannur. During weekends and holidays, I would go to Kannur and knock on several doors. When I go to houses during the afternoons, they would offer me lunch, despite me being a total stranger to them. Such was the innocence of the people of Kannur, something that I have never seen in anybody else,” he wrote.
Salim said that when the same people, blinded by politics, take up arms without hesitation to hack others to death, all the innocence and their good nature is lost. He added that Kannur has turned into a place where people who are hacked are unaware of why they were hacked, and people who kill do not know why they do so.
“But, they are both struggling to make both ends meet,” Salim Kumar wrote.
The actor, who declared that he regards the people of Kannur more than he loves the people of his hometown, however, offered a word of caution.
“To my brothers who are willing to kill and get killed…You are no martyr, do not expect the people of Kerala to hail you as one. For them, you are only the reason for an unexpected holiday. Make more bombs, take out your old knifes. Because Kannur still has poor people, who are willing to kill and get killed,” Salim Kumar said.
Slipping into a tone of sarcasm, the actor said that the people should, however, make it a point to kill on working days and not during weekends.
“The government has already granted us time during the weekends to enjoy. So do try to keep your killings to the weekends. We await the next hartal that will follow another murder,” the actor wrote.
Extending his apologies to the women members of the families who lost their men to political killings, the actor said that he was compelled to speak out his mind.