Rejissh Midhila directorial with Yogi Babu starts Jaisalmer schedule

Anna Mathews

Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam-director

Rejissh Midhila

is excited about the current schedule of

Yaanai Mugathan

, which starts today in Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan, near the Indo-Pak border. The film, starring Yogi Babu, Urvashi and Ramesh Thilak is a Tamil fantasy drama, and modeled on the director’s earlier film Innu Muthal, starring Siju Wilson.

Speaking about working on his first Kollywood venture, the director says, “It feels easier to work in Tamil, when the project is set on a larger scale. This film, like my earlier one, is also about the presence of God and the questions around this, but is more massy and I’ve made it slightly more controversial. Urvashi chechi provided me with all the support to have my script translated into Tamil.”

Interestingly, Rejissh was location scouting in Jaisalmer for another project when Yogi Babu called him after watching Innu Muthal and asked him to redo it in Tamil, so the director put that project on hold to start this one. The comedy actor plays Ganesha — rather than Lord Krishnan from the original version and a more god-like character than the ‘pucca local’ avatar in Malayalam — while Ramesh Thilak is an autorickshaw driver and Urvashi plays his landlady. While the Malayalam film was centered around the driver and his discovery of the meaning of God, here the story is told from the point of view of Ganesha, with an important backstory based on Urvashi’s character.

“Yogi Babu is deeply pious, so he was keen to do this. And filming with Urvashi chechi was a dream,” says Rejissh. The film also features Hareesh Peradi, George Maryan and Uday Chandra, who was also in the original version, and plays a villager from Jaisalmer, in the Thar desert. Bharath Shanker of Mandela fame is the music director. “It’s bitterly cold here; we can barely manage to get out of bed,” says Rejissh laughing. “But the people are supportive and the place is very neat and clean. If we climb a hill, we can see Pakistan. It is exciting to be here.”