You can spot him, most often in colourful long kurthas, at police conventions. Tony Chittettukalam has been associating with the Kerala Police for a while now; his event management and PR Company helps coordinate many activities. So it comes as no surprise that IG Manoj Abraham called upon him to make short films on the subject of road safety. Tony made 10, and Mohanlal features in every one of them.
Bringing in the star was the natural thing to do — he was the brand ambassador for Subhayatra, a road safety campaign by the Kerala Police. “Subhayatra was launched in January 2015, and there have been quite a few campaigns which went unnoticed. There had to be a way to spread awareness and reach out to people,” Tony says. So he’s kept the films short, one to two minutes each. “That way it can be circulated through Whatsapp groups, because it is of small size and it is attractive.”
Tony didn’t want his films to follow the pattern of typical awareness videos with a mishap and a message. “It has to be positive,” he says. So the short films about wearing helmets and seatbelts or avoiding drunken driving and driving while talking on the phone, appear cheerful. Somewhere in between every film, Mohanlal pops up with a short message and then the film resumes.
Tony, who has worked as a journalist for many years, began writing at a young age. “In fact, the day I joined Deepika as a journalist was my 21st birthday,” he laughs. He worked on the weekends even as he took a PG. He picked stories he did as part of work to make books — like the biographies of Shobhana George and K.S. Chithra and Guinness Pakru. Tony has written about 30 books so far, all non-fiction. He has also written the Malayalam version of Limca Book of Records. Now, he is planning a feature film on a social theme.
