I’m meeting Patralekha at her modest Andheri apartment. A huge poster of Audrey Hepburn dwarfs everything else in her bedroom, which is in a sort of mini chaos because she’s getting ready for a media event. There are dresses lying around her bed, pastels and off-white vie for attention, but she chooses a red-hot dress for the event, more in keeping with her newfound seductress avatar. Her hair stylist is busy trying to tame her tresses and the make-up guy is waiting with his tools poised, tapping his feet to give vent to his impatience. Her mother believes I look famished and feeds me some wholesome Bengali food. Patralekha makes do with a bland soup as I greedily wolf down fish curry. She looks at me with envy. The downside of being an actress is that you can’t eat what you want. We talk about this, that and the other. The conversation then approaches her career.
Recently, she played a sex addict in Love Games, something completely opposite to her traditional avatar in CityLights. More so, the never-ending lip-lock with co-star Gaurav Arora created a sensation of sorts. She admits shooting it was a bit tricky. She had done kissing scenes before with her real-life boyfriend Rajkummar Rao in CityLights and still wasn’t comfortable with the same. In fact, CityLights director, Hansal Mehta, had shot on an almost empty set to accommodate her inhibitions.
Vikram Bhatt’s Love Games was a different ball game. There were some 40 people on the sets and it was uncomfortable for her to get intimate in front of them. Vikram Bhatt asked her to regard the kissing scene as ‘a piece of lengthy dialogue’. “Before the scene, I just numbed myself and prepared to go ahead. Once it was over it didn’t seem like a big deal,” she laughs today remembering her ordeal then. Even after essaying such a bold role, she draws a line. “I’ll never do a nude scene. I know I’m an actor and I should never say never. But I’m not comfortable with my body yet,” she reveals.
Patralekha won notice as the villager who becomes a bar dancer to support her husband in CityLights. The applause, however, didn’t translate into offers. She shares, “One day, I went to Mahesh Bhatt’s office and asked for work. Bhatt saab said Vikram Bhatt was scouting for new faces for his upcoming erotic thriller and that I should meet him.” She got a glamourous photoshoot done and showed it to Vikram who liked it well enough to offer her the role.
She did have initial qualms about being able to play a sex-kitten but she took it as a challenge. “Ramona’s character was the opposite of my conventional character of Rakhi in CityLights. But there was a huge scope to perform,” she asserts. Patralekha’s all praise for her co-star Gaurav who made her comfortable in their scenes together and whom she counts as a pal now. She likes his never-say-die attitude. She calls him a wonderful guy. And adds that the crew became a family in the 45 days schedule.
While it was like a picnic most of the time, Patralekha narrates she almost died of hypothermia during the Cape Town sojourn. “I had to wear a swimsuit and had to enter a pool. It was blazing cold and unfortunately the crew forgot to put the heater on. As a result I dived into freezing water,” she recounts. “I was immediately taken out of the pool and given some brandy to drink but being a teetotaler, it made matters worse. Also, I had eaten very little that day. It was so cold that my lips went blue. I fainted from it all,” she guffaws.
Originally from Shillong, Patralekha always wanted to be an actress. “I was a big fan of Julia Roberts and Kajol. And I wanted to get married to Salman Khan,” she giggles. Later, she studied in Mumbai’s HR College. She couldn’t adjust herself to the rough ride that’s Mumbai. “People aren’t rude but everyone is busy fighting their own battles. People don’t have time for anyone else,” she observes. She used to travel in local trains from one end of the city to the other. “The railway platforms are so dirty! The smell used to kill me. I missed the peace and beauty of Shillong. I wanted to run away.”
Luckily, during her final year of college, she met a casting director. He helped her land her first commercial. She earned five thousand rupees, which felt like a mini fortune then and went on to do many other commercials. Later, she attended a three-month course by Barry John to hone her skills. Eventually, Hansal Mehta offered her CityLights. She insists she never had to face a casting couch situation despite being a rank outsider. “The person probably sees who you are and how you carry yourself because no one wants to get into trouble. I never got an indecent proposal,” she states. Initially, the glitzy environs of the film industry made her feel a little awkward but now she’s got used to life under the spotlight. “Earlier, I felt I didn’t belong here. But now, I’m more comfortable with myself. I made friends in the industry… my best friend is Vivek Das Chaudhary, an ad filmmaker, Hansal sir is like family, my co-actors Gaurav and Tara Alisha Berry have also become good friends,” she smiles. “But my 4 am friend is Rajkummar. He’s my best friend first and then my boyfriend.”
In an industry where most couples keep their relationship under wraps, it’s refreshing to see Rajkummar and Patralekha not hiding behind the facade of ‘good friends’. “Rajkummar had already done Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex Aur Dhokha (LSD, 2010) while I was a struggling actress. He had so convincingly played a guy who shoots a sex tape in LSD that I believed he was horrible in real life too,” she laughs. But serendipity had to play its trick. One day, she got a call from The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) to act in one of their short films. The guy opposite her was Rajkummar. She flipped when she had to travel with him from Mumbai to Pune. The whole journey was awkward and she didn’t talk to him even once. The ice broke during the workshops. “I realised he was a good boy. He taught me to understand a character, the nuances and then prepare for the role. We stayed in touch after that and hooked up after a year,” she grins.
She mentions they’re as insecure as any other girlfriend or boyfriend but the good thing is that they aren’t possessive. They are two young actors who understand the constraints of their profession and have never stopped each other from performing intimate scenes. “Our profession demands it. Kissing is part of acting. It doesn’t mean I’m giving my heart to someone,” she reasons. Ask her to share a few secrets about Rajkummar and she giggles. “He’s a vegetarian; he doesn’t smoke or touch alcohol. He can’t even kill a mosquito because he doesn’t believe in hurting a living being. He’s a giver and large-hearted. He’s always played characters opposite to his personality. He came closest to himself in Shahid”.
We yammer some more. Then it’s time for her to leave. She waves goodbye and is gone. Leaving behind a whiff of her perfume.
RAPID FIRE
Actors she wants to work with:
Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Irrfan Khan
All-time favourite Hindi movies:
Sadma, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Chupke Chupke, Angoor, Queen
She’s sentimental about:
Her eight pet dogs
What she can’t resist:
The Bengali sweet nolen gurer shondesh
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