Coconut, curd and jasmine: What Bollywood thinks of the south | LME 89

Pooja : Aiyo Rama… Welcome to Let Me Yexplain… Come, come.

Megha: Cut Cut. What ‘thenga’ is this Pooja? (Pooja, what atrocity is this?)

Pooja: I’m just auditioning for every south Indian role in Bollywood.

Pooja : Because this is Bollywood’s checklist for south Indians: Loud voice, funny accent, lungi, jasmine, and curd…

Congratulations, you are a stereotype. 

Bollywood has a long tradition of doing the south dirty - turning entire distinct cultures into caricatures, punchlines, and accents.

And the latest addition to this parallel south Indian universe? Janhvi Kapoor in Param Sundari.  A half-Malayali girl, introducing herself as ‘Thekkapetta’ Sundari Damodaran Pillai.

In Malayalam, “thekkapetta” literally translates to “ironed out.” And colloquially means, “tragically dumped.”

So basically, Sundari’s name translates to “Dumped Beauty.”

A multimillion-rupee production house. And nobody bothered to Google it.

Unless, the makers named her “Thekkeppaattil”, a popular family name, and she tragically mispronounced it.

Now this isn’t representation. It’s an ignorant parody. 

And this isn’t new at all, especially for Bollywood. Let me explain.

Representation isn’t just about being visible. It’s about being seen truthfully. 

When south Indian lives are reduced to coconut trees and comic relief, it tells us our realities don’t matter.

At The News Minute, we refuse to accept that. We dig deep, we ask harder questions, and we call out lazy storytelling even when it’s unpopular.

If you believe journalism should respect every culture in its fullness, join us. Subscribe today.

In the trailer of Param Sundari, Janhvi Kapoor’s character is seen yelling at north Indians. 

“Ignorant, illiterate, arrogant, entitled… you bloody thenga!” 

It’s meant to be a mic drop, even a meta moment — especially with that line neatly distributing Mohanlal to Kerala, Rajinikanth to Tamil Nadu, Allu Arjun to Andhra, and Yash to Karnataka. 

Basically, the trailer is trying to say: “See, we know our south stars! We’re in on the joke too!”

Except, here’s the problem. 

The film’s attempt at self-awareness tragically collapses under poor pronunciation, stereotypes scattered like confetti, and the same tired tropes Bollywood has been recycling for decades.

The character speaks in broken Hindi, exaggerated accented English, and a Malayalam so tortured it should file a police complaint.

All this with backwaters, boat races, Mohiniyattam squeezed in like items from a Kerala tourism ad.

And before you ask — no, we can’t even show you the trailer clips here. 

Because the film’s producers have been busy filing copyright strikes on creators who dared to poke fun at it. 

That’s Bollywood’s favourite response to criticism — not listening, but silencing.

For decades, mainstream Hindi cinema has portrayed south Indians as caricatures. Not Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, or Malayali. Just one homogenous species called “Madrasi.”

It started early, most notably with Mehmood’s “Master Pillai” in the 1968 Hindi film Padosan. 

A south Indian Carnatic music teacher whose accent was so mangled, it sounded like he was chewing his own tongue. People laughed. Nobody asked why it was funny.

Then there was Mithun Chakraborty in the 1990 film Agneepath, who sang this. 

Cue the coconut. Always the coconut.

This joke never really got old for Bollywood.

Fast forward to 2013, when Shah Rukh Khan was dancing in a lungi in Chennai Express.

Deepika Padukone speaking in an accent so forced it could crack open a tender coconut.

Or take Ra.One, from 2011. SRK played a Tamilian who ate curd with noodles — a dish that exists only in Bollywood’s imagination. 

And how can we forget Netflix’s 2021 achievement, Meenakshi Sundareshwar.

Two north Indian actors parachuted into Madurai. The result? More filter-coffee jokes, kasavu sarees mixed up with Tamil veshtis, and the cultural depth of a WhatsApp forward.

And now, Param Sundari. Written by the same person who wrote Meenakshi Sundareshwar. Clearly, old habits die hard.

The problem is, this is more than just bad comedy. It’s a cultural hierarchy — with Hindi as the centre, and everyone else as seasoning.

South Indians are forever the “outsiders.”  

And it’s not just the south.

Bengalis as fish-eating, Tagore-quoting philosophers.

Muslims as constant patriotism-test subjects.

And people from the north east? Where do I even begin…

It’s like the industry has a single Excel sheet of clichés and just copies them forward.

And often, when they’re not stereotyping, they’re erasing.

Sky Force, Akshay Kumar’s 2025 film, had turned Kodava war hero Squadron Leader Devayya into a Tamilian. Because who cares, right? Kodavas, Tamils, Malayalis, it’s all one blob outside the Hindi heartland.

And who can forget the national award-winning The Kerala Story? 

The film gave us “Shalini Unnikrishnan from Thiruvananthapuram” — a character so Malayali that she puts jasmine in her hair day and night and eats all her meals on banana leaves.

And for some reason, she chooses to speak heavily accented Hindi with her Malayali family inside her own house, as well as with her Malayali friends.

Because clearly, Malayalis are dying to discuss breakfast, dowry, and life problems in clunky textbook Hindi. 

Add to that the blatant propaganda and falsehoods about Kerala, and you have a film that doesn’t just stereotype, it manufactures an entire caricature on Kerala that Malayalis themselves don’t recognise.

To be fair, southern filmmakers aren’t saints either, in this regard.

Malayalam films like Mallu Singh and Punjabi House reduced Punjabis to bhangra jokes.

Paandippada used a derogatory term for Tamils right in its title.

And 2024 Tamil film Amaran had Sai Pallavi playing a Malayali woman, whose Malayalam sounded like it was run through a Tamil grammar-checker.

But the difference is, south cinema has also shown how to do it right.

Take Sai Pallavi in Premam, playing a Tamil girl. It worked and how, because she actually speaks Tamil.

Or Wamiqa Gabbi in Godha, a Punjabi wrestler played by a Punjabi actor. Real and believable.

Or take His Highness Abdullah, where a Malayalam film beautifully incorporated Urdu music without turning it into parody. (Tu Badi Masha Allah).

There are, of course, times when Bollywood has managed to get it right. 

But more often than not, this has been because of filmmakers and performers from the south. 

Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se avoided lazy clichés in its portrayal of a Malayali woman, thanks to Preity Zinta’s grounded performance and Santosh Sivan’s unforgettable visualisation of Jiya Jale. 

What makes Jiya Jale, especially, stand out is its authenticity. 

The Malayalam portions were written by celebrated lyricist Gireesh Puthenchery and sung by veteran playback singer MG Sreekumar, which is why the words flow naturally and remain a soothing delight to the ear. 

This is a sharp contrast to songs like ‘Laal Color Ki Saree’, where the Malayalam lyrics feel as though they have been lifted straight from Google Translate, jarring to both native speakers and anyone familiar with the language.

Let’s not forget that Hindi cinema has also made films like Aligarh, which treated Rajkummar Rao’s Deepu Sebastian with care, letting him slip into his mother tongue without turning it into a punchline.

Films like Raja Krishna Menon’s Chef, Tanuja Chandra’s Qarib Qarib Singlle, and Anurag Basu’s Ludo showed south Indian characters — played by south Indian actors like Padmapriya, Parvathy, and Pearle Maaney — whose identities were fleshed out beyond tropes.

More recently, Payal Kapadia’s ‘All We Imagine as Light’ and Raj & DK’s ‘Family Man’ have been praised for rooting their characters in cultural specificity, casting actors from the south and letting them speak, behave, and live like real people. 

These are reminders that authenticity comes through when creators trust their characters’ contexts – and when the south isn’t seen through a purely Bollywood lens.

So it can be done. Authenticity is possible. Respect is possible. Only if Bollywood tries.

Instead, commercial Bollywood wants to keep laughing at its own running gag from 1968. Same lungi, same jasmine, same coconut.

But India has changed. Audiences have changed. And if Bollywood wants to stay relevant, it has to change too.

Until then, every time someone says “representation,” Bollywood will hear “comedy sketch.” And that is the real tragedy.

For suggestions and feedbacks, write to lme@thenewsminute.com

Like Pooja’s LME? Support the show: https://rzp.io/rzp/support-lme

Become a TNM subscriber- https://www.thenewsminute.com/subscription

If you are watching from abroad, click this link: https://buy.stripe.com/28o01q9md0OPdtm8wR

Produced by Megha Mukundan, script by Lakshmi Priya, camera by Ajay R, edited by Nikhil Sekhar ET, graphics by Vignesh Manickam.