Something happened to me when I wrote female characters in my early plays; it was a real liberation.

Is my job as a child, even as an adult, is my job to heal the wounds of my parents' childhoods?

The job in every re-write is to make it harder for your characters to get the thing that they need.

Well, because my films are really about how people interact with each other, and the complexity, and the nuance, and the surprise of those moments I try to create a safe enough space that allows the actors to operate from their own instincts. My direction is more suggestions, prompts or questions.

I come from a well-educated and cultured, middle-class Maharashtrian family and have been brought up with social awareness.

I had the worst birthday party ever when I was a child because my parents hired a pony to give rides. And these ponies are never in good health. But this one dropped dead. It just wasn't much fun after that. One kid would sit on him and the rest of us would drag him around.

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.