Published Jun 19, 2026 | 11:04 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 19, 2026 | 11:16 AM
Salim Kumar
Synopsis: There were announcements that commemorated the contributions of JC Daniel, MT Vasudevan Nair, Umbayee and Johnson too.
Chief Minister VD Satheesan did not forget his friend Salim Kumar in his maiden budget on Friday.
The national-award-winning actor, who passed away on June 6 at the age of 56, will be honoured with a Memorial in Ernakulam, the Chief Minister, who is also the Finance Minister, announced. A sum of Rs 1 crore was set aside for this.
Amal Chandra, in his tribute to Salim Kumar on South First, had noted how “for Malayalis, Salim Kumar was not simply an actor one watched. He was ‘an actor ‘ one quoted. His dialogues escaped the confines of cinema and entered everyday speech. His expressions became shorthand for emotions that words struggled to convey.”
“Long before social media transformed popular culture into a universe of memes and reaction images, Salim Kumar’s characters had already become part of Kerala’s vocabulary. Few performers achieve such intimacy with their audience. Fewer still sustain it for more than three decades,” the article had gone on to observe.
Now, the state will have a memorial to celebrate that actor “who went beyond laughter.”
“We laughed not only when we watched him on screen; we continued to laugh later, remembering his expressions and dialogues. Such was the place he occupied in people’s hearts,” Satheesan had earlier said while terming Salim Kumar’s loss that of a brother and close companion.
The budget also announced Rs 1 crore for the Umbayee Music Academy, named after the late Mattancherry-born Ghazal singer, who had passed away in 2018.
Pioneering filmmaker JC Daniel, the father of Malayalam cinema, will, meanwhile, lend his name to a film city ‘Chithra Nagaram’ to be established in Kochi.
Another great auteur, who also remains one of Malayalam’s greatest writers, MT Vasudevan Nair, will also be commemorated with a Cultural Park that will be developed in his name in Kozhikode with an allocation of Rs 50 crore. The cultural park will serve as a venue for showcasing Kerala’s traditional art forms, including Kathakali, Koothu, Theyyam and Oppana. It will also feature a convention theatre, library, voice museum, food court and other cultural facilities.
In addition, a new music academy named after late music director Johnson, who passed away in 2011 after composing many unforgettable songs, will be set up in his hometown of Thrissur.
(With inputs from Dileep V Kumar.)
