Now that Abhay Deol has been roped in to play Sonam Kapoor’s batch-mate, colleague and love-interest at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Aanand Rai’s Raanjhnaa, Dhanush who has been working diligently on his Hindi for his Bollywood debut 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 Kapoor. Dhanush known to do his homework until he gets the role absolutely right, has requested his director to give him time to make his Hindi diction comparable with Abhay’s.

Says a source close to the project, “Abhay and Sonam play JNU colleagues. Their characters would be known to one another for eight years in the script. 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 enough. Sonam with her fashionista’s image needed more practice to look convincing as a thinking politically conscious citizen. But the real challenge is for Dhanush. He not only had to learn Hindi from scratch his dialogue delivery should not look incongruous in front of Abhay’s easy fluency with the Hindustani language. He has asked for more time before he starts shooting.”

The shooting has been pushed forward from May to June to give Dhanush that extra time work on his Hindi.

Says the director Anand Rai, “Yes, we’ve gone forward to June for various reasons. Dhanush is working on his language. He is currently in Namibia shooting action scenes for his next Tamil film. He joins me in Mumbai from Thursday. And then he is in Mumbai with me for a month working on his language and diction. It’s not just the Hindi he also has to master the Varanasi dialect. Abhay plays a very educated product of JNU. Sonam and Abhay share a great camaraderie.”

Rumour has it that the director had a tough time convincing Abhay and Sonam to share screen space together after their public exchange of acrimony over Aisha.