What has been your best role in films so far?
"God! Not that again." The exasperation says a lot more than she does. Time was when the lady would wax eloquent on films, their relevance, her roles. But now, she would rather talk about the NGO she is working with. The Nivara Haq Samiti or Empowerment of Women. She has obviously grown as a human being. But being the professional she is, she responds.

``I can't say which is my best role so far because whenever I give a performance, I always look at it and pay attention to the mistakes I have made. So, going by that yardstick, the least number of mistakes I've made in my performance would be Deepa Mehta's Fire.''

In real life, which role do you think you have given your best to?
"Again, I don't think I can fragment my personality and say this is the best. Even if one were to measure one's efforts by the success it got, it would be difficult because success is an ongoing process. You may be successful in one area and need to work in another one. I have been associated with this group called Nivara Haq in Mumbai for the last 16 years. I don't think I could say that we have been successful in achieving our all goals, as yet. We have rehabilitated an entire village in Latur with the proceeds of my play Tumhari Amrita. Another achievement of Nivara is that, during the 1992 riots, not a single slum that we worked in from Colaba to Jogeshwari, had any communal problems. But, the important thing is to make an effort, to act as a catalyst for change, with the knowledge that change might not occur in your lifetime. When you do this, you empower people to be active participants in their own development rather than be mere recipients.

Who according to you is a woman of substance?
"I feel a woman of substance is one who is can determine the roles she wants assigned to herself. A woman has many roles to play, of a daughter, a wife, a mother. But she must have the power to choose a role for herself and be at the centre of her decision-making process.''

And a man of substance?
"For many generations, a man judged his success by the one he got at his workplace and a woman by the way her relationships at home with her family work out. But now, all this is changing. Women are working outside the home and are asking for more space. Men are expected to have a role at home and child-rearing too. So, a man of substance would be one who is comfortable with this change and one who believes that the world will be a better place if he performed these new roles well.''

What do you think of the media's portrayal of women? Is it keeping up with these changes?
"India is a country that is living in several centuries simultaneously. We had a prime minister when the USA did not even think of a female head of state. Yet, we have villages where the single-most important thing in a woman's life is access to drinking water.

"The media's portrayal is a reflection of this irony. If popular cinema shows Sita, the woman of virtue, then there is a Fire that reflects the reality.

But then that came in for a lot of flak ``No, not at all. First of all let me make it clear that it was not the audience that created the furore about Fire. For the first three weeks the film ran to packed houses. It was the Shiv Sena that tried to get political mileage out of it. And it was the people who brought the film back to the theatres.

What about the beauty contests where a woman has to depend on her looks to get somewhere in life?
``Beauty contests are not all wrong. They are based on one's looks but now more and more it focusses on the personality rather that just how you look. And that, according to me, is great. Because this empowers young girls to use their position to work for society. Besides, in a society that has suppressed sexuality and any discussion about it has been termed wicked, these contests come as a celebration of a woman's body which is healthy. But, of course, the danger is to lose perspective. If the girls become anorexic because of the contest then obviously she has narrowed down the role of the beauty contest in her life.

What do you plan to do when you retire?
``I don't plan to retire at all. My father is 80 and works in a village called Mijwan for the upliftment of women. I too plan to die with my boots on. I will continue to be an actor and work as an activist till my last year".