My dad was in the Indian Army. He died in a terrorist attack in Kashmir in 1994. After that, my mum and I settled in Noida. I went to Delhi Public School in Noida and then to Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University. It was in college that I realised I wanted to be on the stage and in front of the camera.

These are stories you hear... of people sitting in a mall and being spotted, and you think it will happen to you. And when you're fresh off the boat, and new in Bombay, you want those kind of things! They are magical fables. You want to, somewhere, be a part of it, something people will read about. But reality is different.

Nothing in my background has anything to do with films. In that sense, I am a complete outsider.

I love to sing. I never had any formal training. My mother is a singer, and I picked up listening to her.

It is absolutely critical for competitiveness in the United States for us to really raise the bar in education, especially in math, in science, in technology.

I am very active in the co-operative movement. I am very active in agro-industrial growth. I am taking up the issues of the farmers of India. I am active in the field of education.

My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.