I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men's clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

I didn't want to set up a women's studies program. I thought women should learn to operate in a coeducational atmosphere, because, especially in national security and international affairs, it's male-dominated.

I did go to Wellesley, a women's college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

I'm still my parent's child, I'm still me, but I made a choice. I evolved into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I think it has to do with evolution.

I consider myself very fortunate to grow up in a time when my family, my friends don't look at me funny because I'm a 29-year-old single woman.

The divorce in my family was really amicable. There were no fireworks. It was all sort of behind the scenes, if you will. None of us kids ever saw any argument.

My grandfather, or Nana Ji, as we called him, was a family legend. Amarnath Vidyalankar spent his life fighting for India's independence, which included spending four years in prison in Mahatma Gandhi's movement. I still remember the conversations we had together, many of them while playing chess.