MUMBAI: Mention Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge? and Konkona Sen Sharma’s face lights up. “It’s not that I haven’t done comedy, but I’ve never done a full-blown comedy, so in that sense Atithi ... was a new thing to do,” she says .

Did it require a lot of practice – they say that for doing comedy, your comic timing should be right? “Arrey nahin baba. See, to make people laugh, your comic timing has to be correct, yes, but timing is important in every genre. An actor should have an inherent timing to maintain a kind of rhythm in acting, be it drama, comedy, or anything,” says the dusky actress, who is in Delhi today for her play The Blue Mug.

She and her co-star Ajay Devgn are both associated with gravity and intensity. Was that the reason she once said “Ajay and I are similar”? “We are similar not just in the kind of roles we do, we are similar because we both are self-sufficient people,” she says. “And it’s not just me, even Paresh Rawal, all three of us are similar in the sense that we just concentrate on work, we don’t socialise much, maintain cordial relations with co-actors, we aren’t bothered about other things.”

Since the start of her career, Konkona has always chosen to tread a different path, be it playing a mother in her debut movie Mr and Mrs Iyer, or playing the role of a mentally ill woman in 15 Park Avenue. Is she comfortable with her choice of roles and what the industry offers? “Oh yes. The problem in this industry is that when you do a certain kind of role, people typecast you and offer you similar roles, but I select different kind of movies, so I’d say I have been lucky to have got such varied roles and offers,” she says.

Does she believe that being Aparna Sen’s daughter gave her a head start in the industry? “Yes, it did, because she is a very well respected director and is known for her kind of movies. But at the same time, she is not like an Amitabh Bachchan. I mean to say, she is not a global icon or a global figure. So I would say that it did give me an advantage, and star kids do get an advantage, but then ultimately they have to prove themselves too. No one can survive in the industry for long without talent,” she says. “I think this is a good time to be an actor, as a lot of new stories and concepts are being explored now. I’m also doing the play The Blue Mug, for which I toured for about a month. And that’s not difficult either, because when you know that you have to do it, you take out time for it. When you do what gives you happiness, managing time no longer remains a problem,” explains Konkona.

There have been many rumours surrounding her personal life, which the actress flatly refuses to clarify. “I don’t want to talk about my personal life,” is all she says. But she can at least tell us about her take on marriage. She agrees and says, “I believe in the institution of marriage, but I think marriage is not the be all and end all of everything. It has its place and importance, I don’t deny that, but your life’s agenda should not be marriage only,” she concludes.