Meet food content creator Nazeer AK who has actor Mohanlal among his Instagram followers

Food content creator Nazeer AK from Changanassery is among the 26 people that actor Mohanlal follows on Instagram

Food content creator Nazeer AK is a celebrity these days because he is one of the 26 people that actor Mohanlal follows on Instagram.

Mohanlal, who has 5.9 million followers on Instagram, is among the 164k people who follow Nazeer’s Instagram handle, @villagespices_official. Thanks to the actor, Nazeer is in the company of celebrities such as Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, AR Rahman, and Kalyani Priyadarshan whom the actor follows on Instagram.

“When my daughter, Shamna Mol VN, who looks after my Instagram account, broke the news to me, I was pleasantly taken aback. Why would he follow me from among so many content creators? I haven’t figured out that yet,” says Nazeer with a chuckle.

The 54-year-old from Payippad, near Changanassery in Kottayam district, made his debut on social media two years ago with a YouTube channel, Village Spices, followed by pages on Facebook and Instagram. “Social media was an alien space to me until my son, Firos VN, introduced me to it. It was our circumstances that forced me try this,” he says.

A cook with various catering units for nearly three decades, Nazeer was left jobless during the pandemic. When things limped back to normal a few months later, he started working in a hotel. “But it was difficult to make ends meets with that income. That was when my son suggested posting videos on YouTube. I had my doubts because I knew nothing about any social media platform,” he says.

He started posting videos of dishes commonly prepared in Malayali households. “It took a while for the channel to get noticed. The initial few videos didn’t get many views and we were disappointed. But a video on chakka puzhukku (a dish made with raw jackfruit, seeds and coconut) did the magic for me,” says a beaming Naseer.

Firos, who shoots, edits and creates the content for the social media handles, adds that he did not expect his father to go this far. “He speaks to the camera the same way he speaks with us. May be that’s why people like his videos,” Firos says. Nazeer’s wife, Shamla Nazeer, is also part of many posts.