Cute Mottoos from Kasaragod steals show on KITE Victers
KOZHIKODE: ‘Aade poykooda... Eede poykooda... Aprathum Eprathum poykooda... Namma Pinne Eeda Poondu...?’ (Can’t go here, there or anywhere. Where should we go then?) said eight-year-old Mottoos in pure Kasaragod slang on day of school reopening. His innocent query came on the KITE-Victers channel on Tuesday.
Mottoos was referring to the plight of children confined to the walls of their homes on account of the pandemic. His unique slang and appearance — the tiny tonsured head and the white-coloured vest — made him the favourite on the opening day of First Bell 2.0, the second edition of the digital classes for state school students telecast on the KITE-Victers channel.
Mottoos is the screen name of Devaraj K V, a Class III student of GVHSS Madikai-2 in Kasaragod. A YouTuber in his own right, the young lad had regularly updated 91 of his videos, which provided Covid awareness with the help of simple anecdotes under the name of Mottoos, on the online platform. Hence, appearing in a video is hardly a big deal for him.
“However, being shown on KITE-Victers was my dream and finally that happened. I am on cloud nine now. I had sent videos to KITE-Victers more than five times now, but they were not chosen,” Devaraj beamed. He had entered the India Book of Records for the marathon 91 video effort.
Rajesh KV, father of Devaraj, narrated how his son came to be known as Mottoos. “During the first lockdown, there was this trend of people shaving their heads. Devaraj did the same. It was then that we started recording his Covid awareness videos on mobile phone. His tonsured appearance and local slang became an instant hit,” said Rajesh, a school teacher. Rajesh films and edits Mottoos videos while Reeja T, mother of Devaraj, takes care of the scripting part.
According to KITE-Victers’ staff, they have received 250- odd videos from children across the state. “We shortlisted 44 of them. And 15 of them were telecast on Tuesday while the rest will be beamed in the coming days.
‘Loss of school days, hope of going to school again’ and being creative during lockdown’ was the theme for the video,” they said.The signature jingle of First Bell-2.0 is sung by Shivankari P (Government HSS for Girls, Cotton Hill, Thiruvananthapuram). The other students, who appeared on day one, include Maruthanila M, Nasriya, Manju Rangeshwari, Rajeesh and Sony T P (Palakkad), Emma Maria, Rachel Andrea, Steve Anderson and Deepika K (Ernakulam), Hyfa Ashraf (Kannur) and Nefrin N S and Johitha Mathew (Thiruvananthapuram).