Nawazuddin Siddiqui who’s lately been talked about for his performance in the twin Cannes entries Miss Lovely and Gangs Of Wasseypur, is going places. To the outskirts of Ahmedabad, to be exact.

In a small dusty Gujarati town Nawazuddin will play a schoolteacher who has more than an academic interest in one of his female students, to be played by newcomer Shweta Triparthi.

The film entitled Haraam-khor to be produced by Anurag Kashyap is being directed by Shlok Sharma who assisted Kashyap in No Smoking, Dev D and Gangs Of Wasseypur.

One caught Nawazuddin as he was packing for his long outset stint in Gujarat. “It’s a controversial subject and the character is not the role-model kind of teacher that we see in films like To Sir With Love and Mahesh Bhatt’s Sir. My character is grey. It reflects the reality today about our education system on so many levels.”

Nawazuddin has used newspaper stories as a reference for his character. “It’s important to keep the character as real as possible. And since it’s such a sensitive subject questioning the sacrosanct relationship between guru and shishya we wanted to be sure I don’t make it look cheesy.”