July 16, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Whenever, wherever Akshay Kumar is shooting, especially in the unexplored interiors, he likes to seek out places of worship to visit and find solace. It could be a small Gurdwara tucked away in the by lane of Amristar or a Mata temple on a hill in Manali, Akshay will climb that extra mile, trek that extra vertical distance to get there.

So it was in Baramati where Akshay shot for several months this year for the new Priyadarshan film Khatta Meetha. In Baramati, Akshay discovered a small temple in a far-off place that he immediately felt connected with.

Akshay began to frequent that temple every day.

Says a source from the unit, “Earlier he wouldn’t tell anyone where he’d disappear early in the morning, or any time of the day. Soon, we found where he was off to. What we didn’t know was that he had taken a mannat that he’d return to the temple when Khatta Meetha was ready for release”.

So it was that Akshay left on early Saturday morning by a chartered flight, just before he left for Manali to shoot a song with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for Vipul Shah’s Action Replayy to fulfill his mannat in his favorite temple at Baramati.

While Akshay refused to comment saying religion was a very personal matter, a source very close to him said, “Akshay takes matters connected to God very seriously. He wouldn’t leave for Manali to shoot until he had fulfilled his mannat in that temple in Baramati”.

–Subhash K. Jha/ Sampurn Wire