Dulquer Salmaan’s Lokah Chapter One - Chandra sparks backlash: My problem with stereotyping Bengaluru women

Dubai: Dulquer Salmaan, the poster boy of Malayalam cinema and the producer of Lokah Chapter One Chandra, recently issued an apology after his film sparked outrage for one casually toxic dialogue.

The line in question? A cop sneering that he would never marry a girl from Bengaluru because “they’re all s***s.” Earlier in the film, another character goes one step further, declaring there are only two types of women: the “good ones” like his mother, and “s***s” — a line you can even catch in the trailer.

Now, Dulquer and his team apologised quickly, saying the intent was never to demean. They even confirmed the dialogue would be edited and culled out, following the backlash. That’s responsible and rare in an industry that usually shrugs off criticism.

But let’s be real: this problem is bigger than one film, one line, or one apology. This isn’t an isolated slip. It’s a lazy and tired stereotype Malayalam cinema has leaned on for years.

Young women who step out of Kerala and into buzzing metros aren’t allowed to simply exist in films — they’re reduced to clichés of coke-addled slackers, loose cannons, or party girls stumbling home at dawn. The city becomes shorthand for moral decay. And the women? Easy targets.

Take Officer on Duty, where Bengaluru’s youth were painted as coke junkies with zero ambition. Or the incredibly trippy Fahadh Faasil's Aavesham, which packaged Bengaluru as something of a merry playground of booze, weed, and endless slacking.

And now Lokah, a brilliant film with a fierce heroine in Kalyani Priyadarshan, lets its antagonist cop get away with another lazy, derogatory line about young women daring to have a life.

Let me pause here: I loved Lokah. I loved its leading lady, the dystopian world-building and adorable slacker act from Naslen. And yes, I get it — the scene demanded the cop be vile, be ugly in his words. But do we always have to drag Bengaluru women into the muck when we’re looking for shorthand villainy?

But having written that, not every film has done Bengaluru dirty. Acclaimed director Anjali Menon's blockbuster Bangalore Days, for instance, might have been vanilla and pleasing in its storytelling, but it never turned the city into some dark sinkhole where morality goes to die. The movie, ironically also starring Dulquer Salmaan, captured the chaos, the charm, and the possibility of the city without shaming its youth. That’s the difference.

Here’s my truth. As a young woman in her early twenties straight out of my master’s in journalism, I moved to Bengaluru with four other college mates and bffs. We had studied together for our bachelors degree and understandably we were all figuring life out, sharing rooms, eating Maggi and eggs at 2 am, surviving on cheap filter coffee, and learning what it meant to live on our own terms. Bengaluru wasn’t the stereotype Malayalam films love to peddle. It was the opposite: a city of autonomy.

It was where women like me finally shook off the clutches of watchful parents (full disclosure, my parents were rockstars who lived an insulated life in Dubai) and nosy neighbors.

It was where you could breathe without being measured against tradition at every step. Bengaluru was messy, yes — the traffic snarls could kill your spirit — but it was also liberating. For women from Kerala, it was the first taste of freedom, not moral collapse. Those years remain the best of my life.

So when cinema reduces that complex, vibrant city into nothing more than a cesspool of party girls and druggies, it isn’t just lazy writing — it’s insulting.

Every city has a vibe. Mumbai screams hustle. Chennai hums tradition. Bengaluru? It spells freedom.

That’s why it attracts not just the IT crowd but waves of students and dreamers. And when Malayalam films repeatedly vilify it, they reinforce a warped perception. They tell young audiences that freedom equals moral failure, that autonomy for women is dangerous, that leaving Kerala’s “safe” borders is a one-way ticket to ruin.

This isn’t just cinema being cheeky — it’s cinema reinforcing patriarchy in the guise of gritty realism.

To his credit, Dulquer apologised swiftly. The line has been edited, and he made it clear there was no intent to demean. That matters. Accountability in cinema is rare, and when a producer of his stature acknowledges missteps, it sets a precedent.

But apologies alone won’t cut it. Malayalam cinema needs to retire its obsession with slandering women who dare to live outside Kerala’s borders. It needs to stop weaponising Bengaluru as a metaphor for moral decay.

Because here’s the deal: Bengaluru is not your punchline. For many of us, it’s the place where we became ourselves. And that deserves more respect than lazy one-liners and stereotypes on screen.