Mesmerising Mamta
Mamta Mohandas is scaling heights. Though her debut film was Mayookham directed by Hariharan, it was in Lanka opposite Suresh Gopi, that she received many accolades and it showed that Mamta had arrived. Mamta, who originally hails from Kozhikode, grew up in Bahrain and did a stint on the ramp in Bangalore before she jumped into films.
As a student, she wanted to finish her post graduation and work as a banker. Has she given into the glitz of the glam world? She says, “In spite of my parents being very particular about how I fared in my exams, they also felt that I needed to do more for an over-all development because they didn’t want me to grow up and ask them why they denied me of anything other than academics. So that’s how I did a year of Bharatnatyam, two years of Carnatic music and when I realised the beauty of Hindustani music, I did that for four years.”
Mamta Mohandas is already being touted as one of the most interesting and fresh faces of Telugu cinema. She made heads turn even before she signed her maiden Telugu film. But she has no plans to confine herself to films and has already recorded songs for two films.
She says, “Destiny’s call again. I never made any attempt to sing in movies and neither (unlike what people here say) did I send people CDs of mine. I’ve only sung one song until now and that happened when I was at a photo shoot with Siddharth. Music director Devisri Prasad just walked into the studio. I didn’t even know who he was. While Siddharth and I were discussing music amidst the shoot, he heard me sing a tune and later on he asked me to drop into his studio when I was done with the shoot. But the tune that he gave me was for the title song of the Telugu film Rakhee. He loved it and recorded it. In my case, nothing is pre-planned. It’s all decided at the spur of the moment, because some things you plan never work-out. Ultimately destiny surfaces and takes control of situations and it’s always for the better.”
Mamta has so far been a part of progressive cinema. Does she enjoy doing formula films? “I love films. Formula films follow a predictable pattern that has worked in the past and will probably work again because the audience knows what to expect. We do see a huge section of the audience welcoming it maybe another section will not. Plus these days Malayalam films are coming out with a dash of formula but with a progressive treatment. And what are movies ultimately? It’s entertainment . So I love to entertain.”
About her future projects she says,”I have just finished my debut Tamil film titled Sivappathigaaram directed by Karu Palaniyappan with Vishal as the hero. I’m currently doing Baba Kalyani with Mohanlal directed by Shaji Kailas.
Has she found her ideal man? “If and when he walks into my life, I’ll know if he’s ideal or not. Right now I can only say, my ideal man should be tall.” On the people she would like to work with, Mamta says, “I’d like to work with Big B sometime, but I don’t idolise anyone.
