What Indumol says on Kasaragod...??

'Lights, camera, action!' seemed to be the keywords when we reached Malabar. Our first stop in Malabar was Kasaragod, Bekal fort was where the keywords became the keywords! We saw a newly married couple climbing the stairs to the fort, with a photographer trying to catch up with the enthusiasm of the couple. Now that’s a novel idea I thought, getting your wedding pictures shot with a strong fort as a backdrop. I hid and shamelessly took pictures of the couple. As we walked around the fort, we saw many such couples. Was the whole of Kasaragod wedded to the idea of taking wedding pictures on the fort on the same day? No. One, those were not newly wedded couples and second, these pictures wouldn’t go into a family album but would soon be aired on some local channel to go with a song. As we climbed the walls of the fort, we saw another film shooting in progress.
Our next stop was Kannur, here again Angelo fort formed the backdrop for yet another wedding song. And as we were returning to our hotel, we saw more cameras near our hotel. When we checked with our auto driver, Rajan, we were told that Kalabhavan Mani was shooting in one of the houses.
The next Malabar stop was Kozhikode. With no hotel bookings, I quickly ran through my travel guide to look up hotels and Hotel Maharani seemed to fit our budget. As we were about to reach the place, I asked our rickshaw driver, Biju, if it was a decent hotel. Biju nodded in approval and also added that actor Mohanlal was staying at the hotel. Wow, could we go elsewhere, no way! We hurried to the reception and asked if there was a room available, and the other pertinent question, “Is Mohanlal here?” To which, the man at the reception smiled and told me that Mohanlal was there though he was staying at the Taj. We quickly took the keys and checked with the boy about Mohanlal’s whereabouts. He pointed to a room on the second floor; I dropped my luggage and stood there like a true blue paparazzo or like a true blue fan, waiting for Mohanlal to appear from behind the closed door where makeup was being applied on him. Voila, there he was and I took some shots of him. Then we decided to go and ask him if he would mind posing with us. ‘No problem,’ is what he said and look who took pics with him!