Ram Leela, the traditional folk theatre, is a very key element in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's forthcoming Delhi 6. But when the director set out looking for a group that specialises in Ram Leela, he found that there were no groups that were actually carrying forward the tradition of Ram Leela any more.

Rakeysh swore that he would not do away with these essential scenes and did a search for people who could fit into the roles of Ram, Sita, Laxman and Hanuman. "He found Ram in Sagar University, Sita in Allahabad, Laxman in Ujjain and Hanuman in Varanasi and then got all of them together and rehearsed for almost three months to put up the jhalkis of Ram Leela," an insider says.

When contacted, Rakeysh says, "Ram Leela is an important part of our narrative and we wanted to show particular jhalkis that Abhishek Bachchan is surprised to see, but when we set out to find these groups we realised how difficult it was to find a group. Only the heartland of India had somehow not killed the dying art."