Already tipped for the top, teenage actress Sheena Shahabadi has been talking about her preparation for the film Teree Sang which deals with the controversial issue of teenage pregnancy. “We’ve done workshops so that we don’t feel any discomfort,” she explains, “It’s an awareness film. Such issues shouldn’t be swept under the carpet. I am aware that this is a pertinent issue in India and abroad. In February this year, a 13-year-old girl got pregnant in Italy. The news made headlines when she refused the court’s order to abort her baby.”
Sheena, herself, is only fifteen years old herself, has strong views on the problem that the movie deals with. “Parental support is a must for a teenage mother who wants to be responsible for her mistake,” she argues, “If only India introduced a proper system of sex education!”
Director Satish Kaushik insists the movie has nothing to do with the recent US release Juno and that he wrote the movie before the Ellen Page starrer. “It has nothing to do with Juno,” he says, “In fact, when I was at the Toronoto film festival for my film Brick Lane, I was shocked to see that Juno had the same storyline as my story but I had already finished shooting my film by then. Both the films are dealing with a young girl having a child, the films are entirely different.”
Sheena’s co-star in the movie, Ruslaan Mumtaz has this word of warning for teenagers: “When I was a teenager, I was nothing like how the characters in this film are. I had no idea about all this, but teenagers now-a-days are exposed to a lot of things. When you are 16-17, you think everything you do you can get away with – but sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. So all I will say is just be careful, yaar?”
