An ode to all moms
Actor Rajith Menon’s seven-minute bilingual musical is a tribute to mothers and has Zarina Wahab in the lead
By : shreejaya nair
Update: 2015-10-31 08:03 GMT
Rajith Menon may have been missing from Mollywood for some time, but the actor is quite busy in the other industries. With his second directorial venture, a seven-minute musical titled With Love Maa in Hindi and Anbendraale Amma in Tamil releasing next month, the actor-director has his platter full.
Rajith’s first directorial was the six-minute musical video Love Policy, featuring Aju Varghese and Shritha Sivadas. Anbendraale Amma, on the other hand, is a musical tribute to mothers and stars Zarina Wahab and Anson Paul in a mother-son combination. “When I thought about whom to cast as the mother, Zarina Wahab came to mind immediately as she would both fit the role and will also be a familiar figure. She was great to work with.”
“I was astonished at the speed at which she worked. She required almost no preparation time and would finish off each scene in 10 to 15 minutes! We completed the shoot in just three days. The post-production works too are almost finished. The song will be released sometime next month,” says Rajith. On the decision to shoot in Tamil and Hindi, he says, “I have always felt that Tamil is the language that lets you describe most effectively the affection you have for your mother. Tamil also has the most number of songs dedicated to mothers. And Hindi would reach a larger audience. As far as Malayalam is concerned, Keralites are familiar with both Hindi and Tamil and they would anyway understand and enjoy these versions. So I felt there was no need for a Malayalam version.”
In terms of acting, Rajith’s Bollywood debut film Hotel Beautifool is scheduled for release in April and his Telugu project Sreerama Raksha will hit the screens in December. “I also have a Tamil and Telugu project coming up this year and a Tamil project with Sugeeth scheduled in February. My role in Sugeeth’s film will be different; it’s not a handicapped character, but something similar. With all these projects in the pipeline, I’m not sure when I’ll be back to Malayalam films. You can never predict the schedules for these languages.
For example, we had two extra schedules for my Telugu movie just for re-shoot! The director wasn’t happy with the location in one of the sequences, so we shot the entire thing in a different location again. In a few other scenes, he wasn’t satisfied with the performance of one of the actors who did a smaller role and we shot it again with a new actor. These industries won’t compromise with quality, no matter how much they have to pay for it,” explains Rajith.