In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.

After the enormous success of All About my Mother, all the awards and everything, I wanted to start a movie in exactly the same place that I used to be before. I wanted to show that all of the success had not changed my perception.

The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.

I think my films are always political, even if I don't put explicitly political things in them.

I've always deplored bad heterosexual values that dictate the minute a marriage is over the former partners no longer speak to each other; only straights could be so cruel and inhuman as to reject totally the person with whom they've shared their life for 20 or 30 years.

I love writing romance, along with science fiction and fantasy - and my books usually meld all three to some degree.

Of course I dream to have this perfect man who does not want to change me. And I'm so not marriage material, it's terrible. But my dream is to have those Sunday mornings, where you're eating breakfast and reading newspapers with somebody.

My family was extremely progressive. My parents had a love marriage, but they separated when I was two years old. I moved to Delhi with my mom, who got involved with the family business.