I have always been focused on my job. No profession allows you the luxury of being half-focused. If you're not into it, you're not there. And the film industry is all the more harsh in these cases, perhaps because it's a business of the limelight.

For me, competition is good; that is what keeps me on my toes and keeps me going. I am always trying to better my own work, do better than my earlier films... do films that are challenging and exciting for me.

When you work on a film, it's important to feel that you are starting afresh and doing it for the first time. Also, it's important to have those butterflies in your stomach; you need to wonder how you are going to approach the character and whether you will be able to do justice to the part.

I have a lot of friends, but my biggest fear is loneliness. I miss my family in Mumbai, and my biggest nightmare every day is to go back home alone.

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire.

I served as the chairman of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group for three years, during which I also had the pleasure of visiting Israel.

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community built during the sixties. During the early years, it was very integrated. I grew up being taught by black teachers with black principals and vice principals and, you know, a lot of black friends. We played in mixed groups, and I kind of thought that was how it was.

In college, I'd gone abroad to get away from a campus where I felt I didn't fit in. And I started writing fiction, at least in part, because it was a way to feel like I was around people, to feel the energy and hum of others' inner lives, without the real-time frustrations and difficulties of actual relationships.