/> Though last week John Abraham escaped a 15-day jail term in the nick of time when bail was granted to him minutes before the cut-off point, the actor has apparently come out far more shaken and traumatized by the experience than he's willing to let out in public, or to even his old parents whom the actor wants to keep away from the sordid details of the experience.

A close friend of the actor reveals that the whole experience of being bundled into a 10x10 room at the sessions court as he awaited the elusive bail order, has left John with a sense of extreme dread and anxiety.

Says John's friend, "John who has not intentionally known a single day of illegality is completely shaken by the experience. He went through the whole day in court in a numbed state.

It was only after his ordeal ended on Friday evening that he realized how close he was to actually going into jail. To add his sense of trauma, the very next morning after he escaped the jail term by a hair's breadth John had to play a normal God-fearing guy who's thrown into jail for reasons he's unable to understand. "

With stunning irony John faced the camera for Sanjay Gupta's Shootout At Wadala the morning after bail, as a non-comprehending convict who arrives at Yerwada jail and is thrown into tiny dingy cell with 10-12 other prisons.

This is the same prison that John would allegedly have been taken too had his bail plea failed. The prison cell built for the film had no room for John's character to sit.

Says a source, "John was to enter the cell and stand in a corner in a numbed state. After the shot John said, ‘Is this really happening?'"

The shock of shooting a sequence that he almost enacted in real life has taken its toll on John.

Says John's buddy, "No doubt the whole experience has changed John's life, as it would change anyone. But the fact that the very next morning after bail he shot a sequence in located in the same jail where he would've been if his bail please was rejected, just blew John's mind. "

We hear the actor has withdrawn into a shell. Seeing the dreadful directness of the sense of déjà vu that John experience director Gupta offered to cancel the shooting.

Says Gupta, "On Saturday morning it was the first day of his shooting. I wasn't sure John would be able to go through it, since he had to play a character who goes into jail not knowing what exactly his crime is. Yeah, if John had been denied bail he'd have been wearing exactly the same uniform and probably going into prison like his character. "

Gupta shot the Yerwada sequences at a children's remand home. "It was pretty scary and I was seriously wondering how John would go through it, " says the director.

Uncannily Gupta had gone through exactly the same touch-and-go experience as John at the same sessions court for anticipatory bail just a few days before John.

"So I knew exactly what John was going though. No one who has not been through the ordeal would know what it feels like. It's like the car crash I suffered in 2002. No one can understand the pain.

I rushed to meet John at the court. He was being treated like any common convict until the bail was accepted. Then suddenly he became John The Star to all the cops around. It was.... surreal. "

John reached home from court late in the experience, numbed with the experience. The next morning at 7. 30 am he had to report for shooting to enact a sequence that he escaped playing in his real life by a minuscule margin.

Says Gupta, "I will never forget the look on John's face when I walked in (after great difficulty) to see him in the room at the sessions court where he was confined.

It was the look of an innocent bewildered gentle animal trapped in a situation way beyond his comprehension or control. I've to shamefully admit that the look I saw on John's face when I went to meet him in the room at the sessions court is what I wanted from John the next morning.

It was the selfish director in me who forgot what John has gone through is exactly what I've been through. "