Ajay Devgan sweats out with Akshaye, Bipasha

Ajay Devgan has set up a makeshift gym in far-off Karaikudi for more than just recreation. For his role in Priyadarshan"s hard-hitting tale of honour killing in Bihar, Ajay Devgan needs to have a specially toned-up physique.

Priyan tells us why. “I"ve turned the horrific tale of an actual incident in Bihar of an inter-caste romance into a full-on action flick. See, I wanted to keep it real. At the same time, I wanted to make it riveting for the audience. So while shooting on an authentic location (Karaikudi is like a small town in Bihar) I"ve made my two heroes Ajay and Akshaye Khanna into full-on action heroes. This film has the kind of real stunts, never seen in Hindi cinema."

Priyan has roped in his old action director B Thyagarajan and a stunt director from South Africa- Frances to devise action scenes, which would take the director"s Bihari drama into the region of riveting realism.

Says Priyan, “When I say real action I mean fight scenes that are the opposite of cable-wired flips somersaults jumps and leaps. This time Ajay has gone as raw as it can get."

The action sequences have both Devgan and Khanna locked in hand-to-hand combats, and other very basic forms of physical aggression that went out of vogue with the old Kung Fu films. For this Devgan needed to get into a different shape, and so did Akshaye. In fact Akshaye is a new convert to the gym till this schedule in Karaikudi started. And Ajay persuaded Akshaye to head for the gym.

“Yes we"ve a set up a terrific gym in this wilderness. It"s been set up in an under-construction building. It has all the equipment," says Bipasha Basu. “We all work out in it. Ajay, and I of course. Paresh Rawal also works out. Akshaye Khanna only used to play squash for exercise. Now he"s started going to the gym. They need to get into a specific shape for this film."

Before producer Arbaaz Khan can shift from Bihar to Vai near Mumbai for the shooting of Abhinav Kashyap"s Dabangg, Priyadrashan has relocated a village of Bihar in Karaikudi, a Tamilian small-town 80 kilometers away from Madurai to shoot for his very real headline-derived inter-caste love story that shook rural Bihar some time ago.

Doesn"t the film take Priyan into a space completely different from his award winning Kanchivaram? “Not at all. That was a different kind of reality. This is different," says Priyan.