• Well, they caught something. . .

It connects; your subconscious connects with it. We try to come up with as many ideas as we can.

• You specialize in roles with great contradictions, the Sardar property dealer Lucky Singh, the tough guy who cries like a baby, then the feudal patriarch in Eklavya who is so vain and so proud and so arrogant and yet so vulnerable and so miserable and so wallowing in self-pity.

I think that character's arrogance and vanity emanated from the fact he was actually weak, it was a façade, he was hollow.

• Like his wig.

Like his wig, and that's a great touch, because he was impotent, possibly gay, you know, possibly. Anybody could say anything they liked to him. His wife was stronger than him, his children didn't love him, and the final straw, even this façade of a big mane, like a lion, was false. When he removed it, you can actually see the scattered hair, the barren head of is, and he tried to cover it up, which was the final insult of all.

• Which was more difficult to play, Lucky Singh or your role in Eklavya?

I think the role in Eklavya. I really don't know. This one is more difficult because he's complex. Lucky Singh . . . there's lot of fun preparing for it because you are smiling while you are doing it. Even in the serious parts, you are smiling, because you know the joke is on Lucky Singh. Here, the joke is not on this guy . . . the whole tragedy is on this guy. He's really like a Greek tragedy.

... contd.