Mammootty’s first visit to Kolkata

October 31, 2013: Yesterday (Oct 30th) evening I hosted a dinner at the Taj Chambers for Southern mega star Mammootty who has acted in over 360 mostly-Malayalam films with the second highest number of lead roles. He has also acted in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi films.

Mammootty was in Kolkata for the first time for the shooting of Pramod Payyannur-directed Malayalam film called Balyakalasakhi. The main shooting base was set up some 60 kms away from Kolkata. I am told that there was a shooting scene at the Victoria Memorial and Town Hall too. Mammootty, who not so well known in Bengal, has been a leading star from south for a career now spanning almost three decades.

I decided to host this dinner for Mammootty as I wanted to provide an opportunity for the Who’s Who from Bengal film fraternity to come over and interact with him. The whole cast and crew of his film Balyakalasakhi, including Seema Biswas, were there at the dinner party.

I was really happy that within 24-hour notice the guests took out time for the dinner which was attended by Atri Bhattacharya, Secretary, Information & Cultural Affairs, Anik Datta, Dibakar Banerjee, Esha and Arijit Datta, Prasenjit Chatterjee, Gautam Ghosh, Mainak, Moon Moon Sen and her husband Bharat Dev Verma, Payel, Rituparna Sengupta and V V Thambi (IPS) and many others.

 
The party started at around 9:30 pm and went on till late. My personal thanks to Usha Uthup and Arindam Sil who helped me to put this evening together. I missed Mohanchandran, General Manager, Taj Bengal, who was in Goa. He too, like Mammootty, hails from Kerala. ess bee