I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money. You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted... I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.

Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.

I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at all desirable. They are trouble. And a mother who, as mine did, has three daughters, no sons, is supposed to go and hang herself, kill herself, because it is such an unlucky kind of motherhood to have.

Everybody has their thing that they're truthful about. My thing is just a love of God... so that's what I'm going to do.

I really feel like my story in modern day times is very similar to a biblical story: you know, somebody that nobody expected, that everybody said couldn't, and by God's grace and power, I was able to accomplish a lot.

Kevin's mind goes to extremely interesting places. Every time we get a script, I go, 'Oh my God, I really didn't see that coming'.

The trend today is vampires, zombies, angels, all the stuff that puts me right to sleep. It's too bad because it's so much less interesting than the diversity of stories you can tell with science.