POWER COUPLES 1: CS VENKITESWARAN AND SPOUSE_STUDY OF A YIN/YANG POWER COUPLE

CS Venkiteswaran is a film critic of some repute from Kerala, who mostly writes in the Malayalam periodicals. His articles have also been collected in compendiums. His daytime job as an economist with the IS Gulati Institute is not at loggerheads with his parttime vocation as a cultural critic and analyst. Venkiteswaran affects a quiet demeanour, often unsmiling and has kept himself aloof from the glitzy world of filmdom. The scholarly mien notwithstanding, he has to his credit quite a few accolades that have accrued from his writing on film and television. His obituary of the Malayalam actor and film maker, Cochin Haneefa was egregious to the point of being obnoxious.

With a salt and pepper beard, the diminutive Venkiteswaran slinks along the streets of Trivandrum at nightfall, spouse in tow, a vidushi, and scholar. This yin-yang power couple is an example of caste privilege allows people to reach cultural podiums of acclaim and keep them for decades (and keep others out in the process). The quiet, unprovocative and demure exterior of Venkity (the curtailed moniker by which he prefers to be known) baffles the casual flaneur. He might glare at you, and makes you wonder. What else does he want. From the dregs of mediocrity, to the heights of provincial fame to which he has been catapulted owing to his caste status, Venkity remains not an aberration, but that de facto rule. He is playing not a double role, as economist and cultural critic, but rather two half roles, one of them as one half of a yin-yang power couple.