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DiscriminationThe practice of putting dark makeup on fair-skinned actors has existed from Malayalam cinema’s black-and-white days, and refuses to die down even now.Revathy / musiczonemovies, Tovino / Instagram, Sheela / empirevideo Towards the end of December last year, Malayalam actor Tovino Thomas shared stills from a new film, in which he looks unnaturally dark. It might not have seemed unnatural if his face was not so well-known, the makeover done exceptionally well. The look is for a special project called Adrishya Jalakangal, he wrote, directed by Dr Biju, in which he plays a ‘nameless young man’. It triggered a not-so-heated discussion on the propriety of darkening faces of fair-skinned actors to play dark-skinned characters. Not at all a new practice in Malayalam cinema, and by the looks of it, not one that is dying down any time soon. “But Tovino is not playing a dark-skinned character in the film. It is...