It has been a year since her debut film, Citylights, opened and many of the people she has met since, are surprised to find that she's not a simple, small-town woman in her 30s. “That was Rakhi, not Patralekhaa,“ she says, admitting she was unfazed about playing a mother in her first film or that it was in an Indie space. “I just wanted to act. There was no question of refusing a film with Hansal Mehta at the helm, a production house that promised visibility and an amazing co-star in Raj (Rajkummar Rao),“ she reasons.

In the midst of filming, both Hansal and Rajkummar went on to bag National Awards for Shahid and this added to the pressure. “One day, when I let it prey on my mind, I couldn't deliver. After that, I just let go,“ Patralekhaa shrugs Citylights got her rave reviews but the scripts that followed went down the same path. Only one project interested her, but when she learnt that Sanjay Leela Bhansali was no longer a part of it, it was a closed chapter too. And Patralekhaa left Mumbai to travel, spending a month in New York, watching plays on Broadway, absorbing the Indie scene and just walking around the cosmopolitan city. Now, she's returned to play some Love Games. That's the tentative title of her next film with Vikram Bhatt which kicks off on August 8 in South Africa. “My character is the polar opposite of Rakhi and even Patralekhaa,“ she admits.


And what's 'good friend' Rajkummar's reaction to the career turnaround? “Raj and I don't discuss work. I haven't shared the script with him, but going by the title, he knows what to expect and has told me to give it all I have, not be timid and inhibited. He's an actor too and doesn't have the mindset of a typical North Indian boy. Besides, we are friends first before anything else and secure about our relationship,“ she asserts.

She's not apprehensive about the skin show which is integral to the plot and character but onscreen intimacy is daunting. With the camera, and 20 other pairs of eyes behind it watching, even the lovemaking scenes with Rajkummar in Citylights were daunting, she recalls. Fortunately, the small town she grew up in, Shillong, is amazingly open-minded and her upbringing was very progressive with her parents insisting that her siblings and she make something of themselves and their lives before thinking of marriage. “My maasi married when she was 37. Marriage is not on the cards for Raj and me right now. We've left the future to destiny and are living in the moment. My parents like him. He's a polite guy and a brilliant actor,“ she smiles.

Surely, she didn't like him in Queen when he stood up Kangana Ranaut on the eve of their wedding? “My heart went out to him. His character was completely black yet he managed to make it grey by the film's end,“ she says, adding that she'd like to do a love story with Raj. “Something like Mani Ratnam's O Kadhal Kanmani where we could play our age and which would reflect our modern, urban mindset, “ she says.  For now it's Love Games.

What if it typecasts her as a sex symbol? “It won't,“ she quips. “In my next film I might play a Plain Jane. I don't play by the rules.“