/> Emraan Hashmi is ready to let the magic begin. And that's meant in quite a literal sense. In Vishal Bhardwaj's Ek Thi Dayan Emraan plays a magician. And he's not going to leave any stone unturned to ensure he looks convincing performing the magician's tricks.

Going the way of Hrithik Roshan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Guzaarish Emraan would be learning magic tricks from one of the foremost magicians of the country before performing them on screen.

Says our source from the project's core team, "It's very simple, really. Emraan doesn't want trick photography to be used for his magician's part in Ek Thi Dayan. He wants all the magic tricks on screen to look, to BE, real.

Vishal Bharadwaj has decided to hire one of India's topmost magicians, whom we won't like to name at the moment, to teach Emraan some really intricate magical tricks. "

Mastering the magical maneouvrings would only be part Emraan's preparations in Ek Thi Dayan. He also needs to probe deep into the psychology of a delusional character.

Says our source from the team, "Emraan's character ‘sees things' We don't know till the end if his visions are real or imagined. Emraan has to understand the psyche of a delusional man before he can convincingly play a man who sees things that others can't. It's a tough role. "

Making it tougher is the fact that the film is also about witchcraft. Hashmi, we are told, has been meeting up with real-life witches to get a hang of the theme.

Says the source, "It just freaked him out. Emraan's encounter with witches left him sh. t scared. But he has no choice but to go with the character's requirements. "

The film has an interesting background. It was a short story written by Aparna Sen's ex-hudband journalist Mukul Sharma.

Says our source, "Vishal loved the story and asked Mukul Sharma to develop it into a full-fledged screenplay. The shortstory become an 80-page novella. And then the screenplay for Ek Thi Dayan. "

Emraan's character of the delusional magician is based on Mukul Shama's own encounter with occultism, a world that Emraan is trying to get familiar with.