Chaddha begins shoot in Amritsar, minus Aishwarya

As the actors soaked in the colourful ambience of Amritsar, Chaddha waxed on her longstanding affair with the city: ‘‘I fell in love with it when I came to live here with my uncle and his two daughters 20 years ago. I loved the small-town feel and the special melange of modernity and tradition.’’

Still, why Amritsar? According to Chaddha, her adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic needed a setting in which ‘‘badi mushkil naal munde labhde ne kudiyan layi (you get grooms with great difficulty)’’, and Amritsar seemed just perfect!

The cast has already completed nine weeks of interior shoots in a bungalow specially recreated in London. Henderson, Noah of The Ring fame, says he’s enjoyed every bit of it even though he was skeptical about the dance and song routine of Hindi movies. ‘‘I remember seeing a movie in which they first fight and then dance in a desert,’’ he said. Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to jive a lot in this movie even though Chaddha calls it a musical of sorts.

The New Zealand-based actor also had a word or two about Aishwarya. ‘‘Initially, she was a little nervous, but she has done extremely well in her role,’’ said Martin, making no bones about his on-screen chemistry with her.

Back to the movie: Straddling three continents, Chaddha’s story is an attempt to show that cultures cannot be controlled. ‘‘Which is why this movie will have a universal appeal,’’ she says, reminding you how she made aloo-gobhi famous the world over.

And right now, she is all set to showcase Amritsar first to her cast of 22, all flown down from London, and then to the wide world beyond. ‘‘Most of the people have not seen the city. It’ll be nice to show them how special it is.’’ Golden Temple, Gandhi Gate, are all on her itinerary.

Denying any similarities with Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, Chaddha said: ‘‘We are both Punjabi women making films on English literary classics but that is where the similarity ends. She is doing a big budget period film while I am making a very contemporary multi-cultural musical.’’