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.

Can a democratic nation fight a War on Terror and at the same time bend over backward so as not to offend a few visitors' rights?

You do have a modicum of peace of mind here, but it's as unsettled as any other place.

With the end of the cold war, all the 'isms' of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism - have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?