Exactly Rupees 15 lakh! This is the amount reached by the actress herself. And which she apparently carried, in cash, onto Prakash Jha’s sets of Rajniti in recent times when she thought she may have to compensate the filmmaker for wasting one day’s shooting.

The story goes that Katz, the one and only female character in Jha’s heavyduty set-up headed by Nana Patekar, Ajay Devgn, Manoj Bajpayee, Randhir Kapoor also Arjun Rampal, is atrocious in her delivery of Hindi dialogue. Also in Rajniti, which she is very excited about; the actress is the focal point of the script also has a large number of lines. But Katrina has been taking her Hindi dialogue delivery lessons seriously and is hellbent on getting the accent as well as pronunciation right.

Here comes the twist. On one particular day during her recent stint in Bhopal, Katz found her staring at sheets of lengthy dialogues and realized she would need an extra day to prepare if she was to get it right. So, she goes up to Jha and told him regarding her predicament. And even before the filmmaker, who had enough grief with this film, might bat an eyelid, the professional girl volunteered to recompense him for her day’s shooting expenses.

Jha confirmed the story. “It was a actually professional gesture and I am very touched,’’ he added. Certainly, he didn’t take the cash and gave his actress the one extra day she needed. Only to be rewarded on day two. Unit hands say that Katrina Kaif had taken it as a challenge and knew every dialogue pat. She surprised everybody present on the set with her spoken lines, and so continues to be the flavour of the season.