Miss words, worth the challenge

PERHAPS Hamlet was right. Perhaps there is a Divinity that shapes our ends. What else would lead a Princeton alumnus, with a degree in Creative Writing, to leave the worlds of Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda and roost in Mumbai to explore love through the Bollywood looking glass.
With Kuch Naa Kaho, which will released on September 5, Puneborn Rohena Gera, making her debut as writer, does exactly that.
An alumnus of St Mary''s School in Pune, Rohena flew to the US to pursue her under graduate degree in Fine Arts from Stanford, followed by a Master''s degree in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. "People said things like, "Who goes all the way to Stanford to get a BA in English. But my parents encouraged me to follow my heart," she says.
Subsequently,Rohena returned to India with the intention of writing for television and films, which she did, working with a TV production company in Mumbai. It was during this period she met Rohan Sippy, son of Ramesh ''Sholay'' Sippy, who was producing a TV serial. "I met him to take his advice on my career. We got along really well and before we knew it we were discussing ideas for his debut film," she recalls.
Pouring over ideas for script was to prove contagious for Rohan and Rohena and the two got married before earnest work on the script had begun. It''s no surprise then, that Kuch Naa Kaho is love story or as Rohena puts it, takes on the "issue" of love. "Writing a script is a very organic process. The story evolves as you work on the screenplay. I often wrote scenes in English, which we then reworked in Hindi," she says.
If you are curious about the encounter of Stanford sensibility with Mumbai film "logic", Rohena says, "I think it''s hard to write a good emotional scene, but it''s perhaps harder to write an out-and-out entertaining scene. I have renewed respect for what people often look down on as "commercial" cinema."
Besides films and writing, Rohena''s sensitivity finds articulation in activism. Last year, horrified by the Gujarat riots, she put together a campaign against communal hatred called Stop the Hatred.
She is also working with the UN Foundation and UK-based organisation Wild Aid on some conservationist messages for TV, besides planning a non-fiction book about the Mumbai film industry.