She is not your typical Bengali beauty. And she may not be as successful as her mom Aparna Sen, but still a National Award in the kitty as such a young age always helps. Konkana Sen Sharma is everything that a Bollyood mainstream heroine is not expected to be. No conventional good looks. No sugar daddy’s to push her luck. And a bit of a problem with her Hindi doesn’t make things any better. Yet, she has delivered a successful ‘Page 3’ more or less on her own esteem, a Mr and Mrs Iyyer won her audience in spite of the language of medium being English. And this month she suddenly finds that she has two back to back releases: Naseeruddin Shah’s ‘Yun Hota To Kya Hota’ and Vishal Bharadwaj’s ‘Omkaara’ with big commercial stars like Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

“I have long been an admirer of Naseer’s work. He can be a taskmaster if he wants, because he is very sure about what he expects,” Konkana says. She plays a Bengali wife Tillotama who is married into a family in Mumbai and whose husband goes to America to work. She lives with her in-laws, until she finally decides to go to America to meet her husband. In the much-talked-about ‘Omkaara’, Sen Sharma has had some amazing moments for she learned to make cow dungs, had an uncomfortable time during the love making scene with Saif, broke into an impromptu local dance, made friends with Kareena off the sets and never interfered in the personal lives of her co-stars. In fact talking about personal life, she is very particular about not discussing her relationship-status with ‘Mixed Doubles’ actor Ranvir Sheorey. Her justification: “I can talk about my personal life with friends and family but how can I discuss my personal life with someone I don’t know,” she says.