Career 24×7

Love 24×7, a malayalam movie on the visual media, has a misleading title. There's no love round the clock here, rather professional commitments that relegate love to the back seat. While an older pair, Suhasini and Kerala's own media man Sasi kumar, decide to let love triumph over careers in their second innings together, the younger pair of dileep and nikhila go their separate ways unwilling to give up their professional dreams. Of course the viewer is left hoping they will come together as the movie comes to a close.
Dileep has captured well the mannerisms and attitude of a successful and dashing young TV anchor. Also one gets a glimpse of the casual and friendly environs of a newsroom and the behind the scenes workings of a channel office.
As someone who worked in a newsroom for nearly two decades, beginning as a subeditor on probation, protagonist Kabini's early diffidence in office seemed my own. The bullying by some  sour seniors is also not alien. Lena emotes well the  plight of the working mother though her casual attitude in letting her young daughter use a work computer to play games while a trainee reporter devises her own ways to get the kid out of the work station seems unpardonable. Nor is it becoming of her to announce her resignation in a huff because the new boss doesn't take kindly to her child using the office machine.
Kabini's transformation into a hip and confident news reader -a change in name, costume and hair style-  is something some of us have achieved but many of us haven't. The change of course has to come from within. Kabini and Sarayu coincidentally are names of rivers, the former a little unusual and hence inviting some ragging by colleagues. The hero and heroine are endearing and touch a raw nerve as they part ways unwilling to give up their desires and egos. All in all, a realistic film with accents from two ends of Kerala (Trivandrum and Mahe) providing some comic relief.
P.s. Bonakkad near Ponmudi now has been added to my list of must-see places.