Kangana's character in 'Katti Batti' does not equate motherhood with marriage, causing a rift in her relationship. Mirror (July 30) had informed that Kangana Ranaut has given the nod to Nikhil Advani's 'Katti Batti', opposite Imran Khan. Now, we have learnt that the film revolves around the couple's live-in relationship which hits a rough patch when she gets pregnant.

When the news is broken, Imran's character, Maddy, reacts with, "Let's get married?" But Payal (Kangana) takes him by surprise by retorting, "Why? Because I'm pregnant? So what's the big deal!" Nikhil points out that both the characters have shades of grey, creating many twists. Payal who comes from an affluent family in Delhi, has refreshingly different ideas about love, marriage and parenthood. But Maddy, a middle-class boy from Pune, is structured in his views, comfortable in his space and the only risk he's ever taken is to fall in love with this unpredictable, volatile girl who turns his life topsy turvy.

It's scripted by Anshul Singhal, a boy from Saharanpur who went to IIT and fell in and then out of love with a girl. The nail on the coffin was their conflicting views on starting a family. "I agreed to do the film just on the basis of the original title, Saali Kutiya: A Love Story.The censors would have never passed it, so we changed it to Katti Batti. But I have retained Anshul's modern take on an age-old institution. It reflects the fact that Indian women today are confident, progressive, empowered and ready to take chances," says Nikhil.

The director was always keen on casting Imran as Maddy, but getting the nod from Kangana for Payal was a bonus. "After the narration, we sat together for three hours discussing details of the character. I could see that Kangana was as excited as I was," he reminisces.

Siddharth Anand's 2005 love story, Salaam Namaste, too revolved around a livein relationship, which unravels when Preity Zinta's character discovers that she is pregnant and her partner, Saif Ali Khan, doesn't want to get married. However, Nikhil points out that while that couple was based in Australia. Maddy and Payal , who meet in art school, live in Mumbai. "Our story is rooted in and unfolds in urban India and that's the big difference," he reasons.