This is for you, dear Door-knobs

There are four certainties in lifemdashdeath taxes journalism why will we ever stop consuming daily facts about the world and quarters after quarters of Old Monk at the Press Club for people struggling to bring home those storiesAashiq Abursquos Naaradan 2022 surveys the latter two worlds in the Malayalam filmmdashthe future of the both of which donrsquot look so certain after allNow I havenrsquot come across too many Indian films that are about news media per se as against stories they report on Quite like say the miniseries The Loudest Voice 2019 on the Fox News nut Roger Ailes Russell Crowe Or quite unlike Ram Gopal Varmarsquos Rann 2010 which was a wasted opportunityTo introduce Abu as a director he made Virus 2019 on the 2018 Nipah outbreak in Kerala like a suspensethriller Only a year before the globe was under the grip of a similar virusmdashmaking the film among the most urgent documents of the times As is Naaradan dealing with a virus of another kindAnd you wouldnrsquot think so into the moviersquos first halfhourmdashexamining passage of time through people using nonsmart phones and Press Club blokes going about their daynight job cribbing about salaries being skipped because employers canrsquot pay A competition of sorts between online news that still does a better job with stories over lsquolegacyrsquo media that has clout and resources to do much betterStuck in this situation is a mildmannered conscientious staranchor one Chandraprakash Up until this point if you ask me the filmrsquos aesthetics are quite pedestrian Thatrsquos both a worry and a surprise The actor playing Chandraprakash is Tovino ThomasI neednrsquot introduce Thomas if yoursquove seen Minnal Murali 2021 on Netflixmdashindisputably Indiarsquos best superhero film with potential for a global franchise Thomas is Minnal Murali And like a Malayali superhero he goes through a transformation in Naaradan as wellmdashalthough in the morally reverse direction if you mayHis character is sidestepped by his news channel employersmdashbecause a newsier journalist with boots on the ground is a better hire and deserves greater screentime Shit happens yo Ego is a prickly thing it could presumably define every move you make only because a sensitive little balloon called selfworthesteem has been hurtFor a second think of the rival journalist with a wider field experience and head to the ground as Rajdeep Sardesai in a channel still dedicated to news gathering as say NDTV The fresh portrait of Thomas as the snubbed Chandraprakash that emerges thereaftermdashof a bully in a corporate suit backed by money allowing him to mindlessly blabber and shame Indians without any consequencesmdashis decidedly Arnab GoswamiObviously Goswami himself in general wouldnrsquot matter if he didnrsquot inspire enough minimemetoo Doorknobs similarly taking news out of television replacing it with bizarre principles that Chandraprakash lays down for employees demanding ldquoenergy and loyaltyrdquo from themmdashfor his own channel now that totally looks like Republic TV Itrsquos called Naaradan positioned as the ldquopracharakrdquo publicistpropagandistHis commands being ldquoEmotions gt facts Allegations first explanations laterhellip I want dirt the lotus of success will bloom in that dirtrdquo A feature film on Goswami alone is hardly furthering a cult then All of this would even seem too filmy for a filmmdashonly that it doesnrsquot even capture the whole truth of cheap reality TV masquerading as open propagandaHow does one explain such naked transformations though I ask this equally for actual people engaging in such a pyre for a profession Money as greed is Godmdashcornering Keralarsquos Rs 700crore news television market for instancemdashis too simplisticEverybody has a living to make and rent to pay Abu I reckon borrows a trope from another Malayalam movie Fahadh Faasil starrer Trance 2020 about a man being groomed into a lsquogodmanrsquo Thomas as Chandraprakash similarly psyches himself towards a sociopathic unscrupulous selfbelief and a devious worldview that allows for no otherThe content that followsmdashsimilar to what passes for ratingsled Indian TV newsmdashis what lay sane English audiences Irsquom convinced only watch as funny bloopers and verbally diarrheic viral clips on social media now To upturn the Gandhian quote ldquoFirst you win then they laugh at you fight you and then ignore yourdquo Unless this is merely my wish masked as statsEnough people for lack of an option during the pandemic religiously watched Indian TV news in 2020 to learn how utter lies get peddled and that truth is elsewhere Apologies arenrsquot part of these anchorsrsquo vocabulary The Sushant Singh Rajput case was a turning point Most people I meet genuinely wanna know where they should get their facts from The plot around Chandraprakash in the film is based on widely reported personal facts too sufficiently fictionalised of courseAn answer to cheap theatrics as mainstream national news is a movie on it I guessmdashthat in turn is infinitely more engagingentertaining anyway Only that I watched Naaradan at its ldquoworld premiererdquo with hardly a few people in MumbaiWhich makes me recommend it all the more in case you find a suitable showtiming at a theatre near you or on an OTT platform at some point Or better still for Abu to scale the film further for a HindiEnglish language remake Or somebody pick up the rightsMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper