Smitten with Delhi, filmmakers ensure that the city will rule the big screen in the coming months

If you though that Bollywood’s love affair with Delhi was just a passing phase, here’s reason to cheer. After Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye, Dev D, Delhi 6 and this summer’s sleeper hit, the indie movie 99, Delhi seems to be firmly on the Bollywood map and this train won’t stop soon. The Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone-starrer, Love Aaj Kal is this year’s biggest Delhi-centric release so far, but there is more to come. Big and small players alike are discovering that Delhi makes an ideal backdrop for their cinema.

“Delhi has a high entertainment quotient for anyone who wants to make any kind of movie. For Love Aaj Kal, we wanted to show a city from the 1960s till today. Delhi was our only choice. The essence of the film is timelessness and Delhi has that quality that no other location could have given us,” says Dinesh Vijan, producer, Illuminati Films. You could do a pop quiz about the number of Delhi landmarks that spring up throughout the film, and it isn’t restricted to historical addresses such as the Qutab Minar and Chandni Chowk. For instance, Padukone is studying at Alliance Francaise, the lovers meet at Connaught Place and zip around the AIIMS flyover.

The new star on the block is the Metro. “It looks good on the screen. The Metro is a Delhi landmark that connects all strata of people and thus offers a wide range of possibilities in the kind of stories to tell,” says Karun Punchhi of Planman Motion Pictures, which will release Do Dooni Char later this year. The film heralds the comeback of 1970s’ stars Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh as a middle-class couple living in Lajpat Nagar. Kapoor plays a Mathematics teacher and the movie charts his journey from driving a scooter to becoming rich enough to own a car. “We felt that Delhi is a city where the social pressures of having a house and a car are far higher than in Mumbai or Kolkata,” says Punchhi. The film has been shot in locations ranging from the bustling markets of Lajpat Nagar and Palika Bazar to the crowded surroundings of Safdarjung Hospital, and highlights life on the road where a scooter must give way to zany cars.

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