Aishwarya masters Tamil

Aishwarya Rai has many hidden talents. One is her ability to grasp languages quickly. This, the unit of Shankar's Robot discovered, while shooting with her. She was required to hold her own against the glib-talking Rajnikanth.

Tamil isn't really familiar territory for Aishwarya, so Rajnikanth and director Shankar came prepared for several re takes.

To everyone's surprise, Aishwarya got a grip of the language in no time at all. Says a source from the set, "She was soon rattling off the dialogues and getting a hang of the emotions with equal skill in both the Hindi and Tamil takes. So much so, that Rajnikanth, who has waited for decades to work with Aishwarya was taken aback."

When asked about the incident, Aishwarya laughs, "Regional languages have never been a problem. I did a Bengali film Chokher Bali and I was able to get a hang of the complex intonations, though later they needed a particular sing-song tone and my voice had to be dubbed."

But the buzz in Robot is that they are planning to retain her Tamil lines in the final print. Says the actress from Ooty, "I'm not familiar with Tamil. My mother tongue Tulu is very different from Tamil. But you must remember my first film Iruvar was in Tamil and I had to say lengthy lines in that film. From my beginnings with Mani Ratnam in Tamil to this my second Tamil film of my career.... it's been quite a journey."