Give me some more time to pick up Hindi, pleads Dhanush

Now that Abhay Deol has been roped in to play a cameo as Sonam Kapoor’s batch-mate and love interest at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Aanand Rai’s ‘Raanjhanaa’, Dhanush – who is the male lead – has asked the director for a month’s time to further work on his Hindi diction.

Abhay plays a well-read, articulate soft-spoken JNU student who has a relationship with Sonam. Shahid Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha were initially signed for these roles. Reportedly Aanand had a tough time convincing Abhay and Sonam to share screen space together after their grievances over ‘Aisha’. Their characters share similar views on politics and life and are often shown to indulge in brainstorming sessions. Getting Abhay into the intellectual character was easy. Sonam with her fashionista image needed more practice to look convincing as a thinking and politically-conscious citizen.

But the real challenge was for Dhanush.
He not only had to learn Hindi from scratch but also make sure his dialogue delivery did not look incongruous in front of Abhay’s easy fluency with the language. And the southern star, who is iconic hero Rajnikanth’s son-in-law and became an overnight national sensation with his ‘Kolaveri Di’, is known to do his homework until he gets the role absolutely right.

So shooting on ‘Raanjhanaa’ has been delayed by a month to give Dhanush that extra time to work on his Hindi for his Bollywood debut. According to Aanand Rai, “Dhanush is currently in Namibia shooting action scenes for his next Tamil film. He joins the cast in Mumbai on Thursday and then is here for a month to work on his language and diction. It’s not just Hindi, he also has to master the Varanasi dialect.” The buzz is that Aanand signed Dhanush based on the actor’s performance in the Tamil film 'Aadukalam' which was even before the success of 'Kolaveri Di' sung for his Tamil film '3'.