Hyderabad gets a darshan of their favourite stars, Priyanka Chopra and Ramcharan Teja

Remember the big dramatic sequence in Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer where the Big B playing the scowling ireful cop Vijay drags Jaya bhaduri, the reluctant eyewitness for the villain Teja’s crime, into the hospital to show her first-hand the mayhem that he has caused? This week director Apoorva Lakhia shot that sequence with Ramcharan Teja and Priyanka Chopra for the neo-Zanjeer. And the venue of the shooting was Ramcharan’s wife Upasana Kamineni’s hospital the massive pride of Hyderabad, the Apollo. An eyewitness from the scene of the melee says, “It was like a rally for big-time politicians, the kind of crowds that Narendra Modi attracts at his election rallies. That’s how popular Ramcharan Teja is in Andhra. And when you add Priyanka Chopra to the proceedings you’ve got a virtual stampede on hand. The minute news spread that Priyanka and Ramcharan were shooting in his wife’s hospital, all of Hyderabad swooped down on the place.” It was Ramacharan Teja’s wife Upasana idea to shoot at the Apollo. Says our source, “The Zanjeer unit earlier planned to shoot the crucial dramatic sequence in another hospital of Hyderabad. Upasana protested, and insisted that they shoot at Apollo. ‘How can you shoot in another hospital when you’ve the best available?’ she argued. No one argues with Upasana, most certainly not Ramcharan. So we decided to shoot the sequence at Apollo making sure that the news of the venue didn’t go out to the public.” Within 20 minutes of the shooting the hospital resembled a political rally. Says the eyewitness, “The entire city of Hyderabad seemed to be there. You see, you have to understand Upasana’s hospital is like a luxury hotel. It’s like the Kokilaben hospital in Mumbai. There’s no restricted entry into the premises. People walk into the main area as and how they wish. So it became a free-for-all, with the Hyderabaid junta demanding a dekko at Ramcharan and Priyanka.” Says the eyewitness, “We were doing that very dramatic scene from the original in a corner of the sprawling hospital .We somehow managed and none of us had to be admitted into the hospital during shooting, ha ha. For this we need to thank Ramcharan’s and Priyanka’s bouncers who were firm but not rude. If the public felt snubbed they would have disrupted our shooting.”