The halls of a school in Central Delhi were recently made to resemble a hospital and actors Govinda, Ranveer Singh and Parineeti Chopra spent a few days delivering dialogues across the Dholpur stone flooring. It was the shoot for their September release, ‘Kill Dil’, and to the caretaker at the N.P. Boys Senior Secondary School on Mandir Marg, it was an intense scene. Perhaps, not as intense as an “out of control” Ranbir Kapoor being taken to a police station in his 2011 hit ‘Rockstar’. That scene too, the caretaker says, was shot here.
Just as The Hindu was establishing the veracity of such Bollywood star sightings, Hazi Hussein who is a member of the electrical department of the New Delhi Municipal Council, nodded that he too had seen the film being shot. After all, Mr. Hussein was part of the restoration team that tucked away wires so that students of the school were not harmed.
On the steps leading up to the entrance of the school was a broken coconut, a reminder that a simple function was conducted on Thursday to inaugurate the building that was given a Rs. 8.36 crore facelift. The work was completed in 22 months. “We felt the building required a comprehensive restoration of interior and exterior spaces keeping with the historic ambience of the structure,” the Council’s chairman Jalaj Shrivastava had told his team. The building that stands at the junction of Mandir Marg and Peshwa Road was designed by CPWD Chief-Architect Russel in 1918. “The building forms a magnificent frontage with stucco Tuscan colonnades wrapping around multiple courtyards that are representative of buildings of the Lutyens’ era,” said press note.
