By Subhash K Jha

The reticent Haasil director Tigmanshu Dhulia has undergone a traumatic experience. The period film Ghulami which he was shooting with Sunny Deol and Irrfan Khan in Pune got into financial trouble.

"But that was just the beginning," Tigmanshu shudders. "My producer Pramod Sharma fell from a high building and broke every bone in his body. He was in hospital for a year."

Where did that leave Ghulami? Sunny Deol who played the Ghulami lead suggested a sequel to Ghayal.

However there's a problem. "Almost every major character in Ghayal died at the end of Raj Kumar Santoshi's film. Apart from Sunny no one else lives beyond that film. I'll have to now re-write the entire story in a different perspective.

A whole new set of characters will have to be woven around Sunny's character. To that extent Ghayal 2 will project a totally different ambience from Ghayal."

Sunny has left the task of carrying the story forward to Tisgmanshu. "He got busy with Apne. Now we'll get back to Ghayal."

Deol who's known to take directors from Raj Santoshi to Gurinder Chadha to Imtiaz Ali under his wings seems to have found his new muse in Dhulia.

Says the director, "Though Ghulami was an unfortunate experience Sunny believed in that project and in letting me do the Ghayal sequence. Now I just need to find a way of carrying the Ghayal story forward keeping in mind the dead characters."

Tigmanshu is forty percent done with his new cops film Shagird. "It's about a cop and his protégé played Nana Patekar and Mohit Ahlawat. Very different from all the cops films seen so far. It's not a dark film. But it isn't a frivolous film either."

The film set in Delhi is inspired by real-life incidents.

Dhulia jumps to Mohit Ahlawat's defence. "I think Ram Gopal Varma was very wrong about Mohit's acting abilities. He's a talented and sincere actor."