Two years in Mumbai and who has seen Rosa Catalano? It isn't as if you could just walk into a favoured Bollywood watering hole and discover her there, happy as a lark, beautiful to boot and on the arm of Bollywood's stylish 'little prince'. Everyone knows that Saif Ali Khan, the young Nawab of Pataudi and Hindi film's poster boy-turned-actor-to-reckon-with, has this Italian belle stashed away somewhere but have you seen her?

'Somewhere' would be an apartment in Mumbai, furnished with a romantic eye with four poster beds, parquet flooring, free-flowing fabric, prints in pretty pink and many-many candles. Competing with the glow of romance, are the books that we suspect are actually read, lining the walls. Perhaps, they provide an escape from her largely me-myself-and-Saif kind of existence. Not that she is complaining, of course.

Forever grist to the rumour mill, the thirty-year-old's 'coming out' in an ad film with Saif, was enough to set the tabloids off. Is there trouble in paradise? Has the 'chhota nawab' been thrown by her desire to be out there, in your face…well, perhaps, just making a living? Apparently not. The girl just wants her due and is ready to work for it. Romance was never a substitute for hard work though keeping the candles burning on both ends may make it a little uncomfortable for the young lord and master. Looks like he is not complaining though.

She is a sport. We realise that even before she jumps into the marble fountain in a Shantanu and Nikhil, ruched shirt that moulds her to perfection, for the Verve shoot and wets her hair under streams of stone-cooled water on a warm monsoon weekend. Even as our stylist, Nisha, is ready to tear her long locks out as H2O meets couture, Rosa is already redefining Bollywood's under-the-waterfall cliché as we cannot help wondering if this is symbolic of things to come on the big screen.

She is a water baby, having spent her first years at an Italian seaside town, and we see her visibly regain her perky form after a gruelling day gamely shooting without a whimper, under the hot city sun. She loves the outdoors, the beach, the sea and regrettably, this is probably as far as she will get with wind and water in this city.

She does get around though. In her own car, refusing to be chauffeur driven, manoeuvring through the teeming traffic and throwing her limited vocabulary of Hindi swear words at reckless rickshaw drivers. She is unaffected and has a certain nervous charm but she is not nervous about pleasing, although this is the first interview she has ever done. Her attitude is as fresh as her face and a certain angular hardness that the camera captures is not apparent in person, denoting rather her inexperience in front of the lens. She seems already rooted in Indianness, one ankle displaying a silver anklet that she never takes off, not even to sleep. And oh yes, did we mention that she is punctual to a fault, arriving for the shoot ahead of time, minutes before the Verve team!