Padma awards such as these do not qualify for ‘Award Wapasi’. Respectable trolls have the unerring instinct to zero in on the communal. Mohanlal is self-serving, self-aggrandizer Uber aggregator of Padma awards with uncanny knack to be on the right side of the RSS. Isn’t it a fact he quit communist television channel Kairali TV to get the Padmashri? Compare that with Mammootty, who continues to be Kairali TV Chairman.

Mohanlal penned a sugary blog to curry audience with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A blog that extolled Modi’s out-with-high-value-currency demonetization, which won BJP Uttar Pradesh in 2017, but lost Modi three states and several by-polls, maybe can even lose him 2019 and a second term. Good trolls assert Mohanlal sorely lacks in good judgment and good manners – Mohanlal is that sort of Hindu who stands with that sort of Hindu and that sort of Hindu is not this sort of Hindu!

There’s talk simmering, Mohanlal will contest Lok Sabha 2019 and all the build-up and Padmabhushan is to put him on the hopefully brand-new 2019 treasury benches. Rajya Sabha has actor Suresh Gopi, Lok Sabha should have ‘Complete Actor’ Mohanlal in place of Congress heartthrob Shashi Tharoor. Mohanlal is a Thiruvananthapuram sprout and has a fan following to rival Tamil actor Vijay’s. He scores in that he’s not floccinaucinihilipilification, worthless in Tharoor’s dictionary, cattle-class!

There are those in BJP who find Tharoor’s eloquence un-Hindu and his years in the United Nations as a class act. When Tharoor stands up in the Lok Sabha to speak, he can be incomprehensible to the BJP members; who, rendered out of depth, raise voices incomprehensible! Mohanlal, if he gets elected, will not transform to talkative because there’s a language difference he cannot fill the gaps with. Actor Suresh Gopi is example of tongue-tied Malayali dashing hero lost in translation a la MP Innocent!

Actor Mammootty has a Law degree to boot and will at least understand which law gets amended and for what. Besides, being a Muslim, he will also have his mite to add to the Triple Talaq debate, which is far from over despite triple the attention it’s getting from Modi and assorted BJP MPs, all of them insisting that three years in jail should be the lot of those tripling ‘talaq’ via Whatsapp and SMS text.

Mohanlal will only be a pretty face with a beard on the BJP back bench, a lawmaker with no idea of the law. AMMA president means he won’t be contributing anything substantive to the debate on women’s rights and gender-justice also. For all his acting abilities, Mohanlal’s Malayali macho is no less than his occasional co-star Macho Mammootty, who has been trolled for the most atrocious anti-woman dialogues made on the Go!

For all that and more, Mohanlal is the highest paid Malayalam actor. Fellow Modi-fan actor Amitabh Bachchan holds him in high esteem as an actor and if Mammootty played CBI in Malayalam films, Mohanlal has played ATS in Hindi movies. Besides, he is Territorial Army.

Notwithstanding those, Kerala’s political atmosphere does not gel with Mohanlal’s politics. The ‘secular Malayalis’ look at him as traitor to their beliefs though Chief Minister Pinarayi, if he is asked, will say, ‘What’s in belief but hollow faith, useless for redemption of the human soul?’ Mohanlal’s latest flick shows him acting ‘Odiyan’ or ‘Black Magician’ and he’ll require more than just black magic to get out of the troll spell cast on him. (IPA Service)