• And it establishes a bond . . .

I hope so. But when a man my age is touching a girl her age, it shouldn't look odd. It should be fatherly. If there's body language working between a young actress and an older actor, you have to establish it by breaking the ice. I do that will all the girls, the young heroines I work with. The first thing I do, the moment I get there, I give them a tight hug.

• Always a good idea.

Always a good idea. There's no agenda.

• And this very tough man, the Sardar, then breaks down.

He breaks down, but all that's Raju's (director Rajkumar Hirani) genius. This guy works in another orbit completely, in designing a Sikh character who's big and bold . . . but he snapped.

• He could be a Parsi character . . . in Bombay that would have worked.

It wouldn't have worked because a Parsi dad would have been a softer dad. But a Sikh guy pulls out a gun while dealing with people, when he's told by his daughter that he's a cheat, it shatters him. It was very beautiful, because the big Sikh character became small, even physically. When he cried in bed, he became small, a little curled up.

• And that was by design?

Of course, but you don't spell it out too much, or it looks calculated. So, this character curls up and goes into almost a foetal position and finds innocence again through his tears. He went back into the womb, so to speak. I don't know if people catch that kind of metaphor.

... contd.