Koena: Doctors gave up, said only prayers cld work

Doctors gave up, said only prayers could work: Koena Mitra

TOI caught up with Koena at her suburban residence, where she greeted us in a LBD showing off her killer curves and confidence that belied the trauma she has gone through. Not every showbiz aspirant loses her face, her fortune and lives to tell the tale. Koena is back from Los Angeles, she tells us, where she studied film editing. And she went to the Kumbh as well. Atonement? She does not flinch. But with remarkable equanimity, Koena takes us through the tumultuous years of her life on the periphery of Bollywood.

Koena was always an aberration in the industry. "People assume that if you are an actress, you must not be very educated," says the post graduate in Psychology. "I am glad I did my Masters," she says, looking back at the time when she had to convince her parents - her mom is a school teacher and dad a CA that showbiz is what she wanted.

Bollywood happened with a special song in Ram Gopal's Varma Road. But it was Sanjay Gupta's Musafir in 2004 that catapulted her into the league of the girls-to-watch-out for.

With the giddying attention, came the disastrous decision - to get a nose job. "After the surgery my bones started swelling up. Even the doctors gave up and said that only medicine and prayers will work," she recalls with an imperceptible shudder.

Doctors gave her six months. "I sat at home initially. But I could not take it any more and started going out with that face of mine," she says. It was a brave decision, especially for someone in the limelight. Koena's face was so disfigured that it made it difficult for her to smile. And even though she was ready to accept her altered appearance, people were not. "I didn't hide anything. But people spoke and wrote the worst kind of about me," she says, her voice rising.

"Even now, rank strangers tell me what I should have done. To them, I say, 'You haven't given me work, you are not feeding me, why are you trying to tell me what I should do?"'

The incident opened Koena's eyes to the uglier side of stardom. "Some of my best friends left me," she says turning pensive, "Maybe I was too honest."

It took her a few more corrective surgeries to get things right. "Suddenly I was this trendsetter. Whenever a cosmetic surgery goes wrong, people say I was the first brave one to talk about it," she says with a wry smile.

The damage to her face was nothing compared to the damage to her career. Offers were trickling in again, but nothing seemed to work out, till a friend from Los Angeles called her and asked for an audition tape. Koena hired a camera team, sent the tape and was liked. "In November 2011, I packed my bags and left for Los Angeles. And I stayed there for eleven months."

It was during this time that she landed a role in Michael Hershel's film, The Story of Naomi. "It wasn't easy. No one cares for you there until you deliver. I was on my own, without my family and friends... it was tough," she says.

Ironically, Koena's so-called disadvantage worked for her in LA. "I was told here that with my kind of face, I could never play a good karwa chauth-kind of wife. But that face worked for me in LA," she smiles.

Koena says she is in a much better place now. There are a couple of interesting films coming up, but she still finds herself being ridiculed. "The other day I tweeted 'Jai Shree Krishna" and I got so many hate messages asking how could someone who's done so many 'sexy' dance numbers turn out to be so religious," she shakes her head.

Koena's "confident, independent streak" continues to pose challenges. "I have had four relationships. Initially, they were attracted to my personality. But after a point they seemed to have a problem with it. Men just want women they can rescue. And I refuse to be one of them."

By Shubha Shetty