Related Stories "Govt has a rule that only a fixed percentage can join Army from a state. This quota must go""Failure to qualify for the Olympics is the catalyst for the change that needs to occur"‘Long-term big subsidies in energy prices are well worth getting rid of’‘The wealthy in India need to do much more for the country’‘I would put Shah Rukh Khan in a situation in which he was the underdog...vulnerable’

Karan and I have put our foot in it so many times it is not even funny. We have had these long conversations, happily bitching about people, and sadly the people we were bitching about have turned up in front of us.

•What’s this interesting equation with Karan? You’re making a three-second appearance in each one of his movies.

That really has nothing to do with an equation or anything like that. It’s just that I think he is my friend. He would ask me to do just a three-second (shot) . . . according to him, he can’t make a film without me.

•You are like his good luck charm.

Yes, I am, and I truly believe that. I’d be very offended if he didn’t take that three-second shot with me.

•You don’t like anybody reading the rulebook to you.

No, I don’t. I have this stubborn little rebel inside me. Somebody tells me I can’t do this, and I have to go out and do it.

•Like what?

I don’t know. It’s stupid things, like at boarding school the nuns used to tell me not to run in the corridors and I’d see the nun coming from the other side and I’d run down the corridor only to prove to myself that I could. Small things like that, and they carry over to bigger things.

•And yet you claim that the nuns adored you.

Oh yes, they loved me. They adored me. They cried a lot when I left. No, I’m lying. They cried tears of joy when I left.

•You are one of the very few people I have met who said they loved being in boarding school.

I loved it. I hated it for the first year.

•Will you send your daughter to boarding school?

I would want to. I definitely want to. I will.

•The other thing that you have done. . . I know yours is a cruel world — people worry about appearance, shape, years, marital status, everything. But you’ve never had problems taking a break, coming back, and every time you came back, you gave a hit.

I hope that just shows that I have common sense and a good script sense.

•No, but have you thought this through, getting married at the peak of your career?

I really am a selfish person. If you call my decisions breaking the rules . . . for one there was no rulebook I went by. Nobody told me this is what you are supposed to do.

•But were you worried that this will mean a break, or that people don’t like married female stars?

I really didn’t think like that. But a lot of people came to me and said, ‘Kya kar rahi ho, picture hit ho rahi hai, this is the wrong time to get married.’ But I wanted to get married, and I thought it was the right time for me, and my mom always raised me up to believe that if you take your own decision, then take the responsibility for whatever that decision entails. So I made the decision to get married, and whatever the consequences, I was okay with it.

•And you came back with a big hit.

Yes, I came back with a big hit.

•And then you had the baby. And you came back with a big hit again. You didn’t have the jitters that most female stars have, about marital status, about having a baby and coming back?

No. Seriously. But maybe I haven’t had the jitters because I feel I have a life beyond that. You get the jitters when you feel you have no life beyond it, my work is all I know — that’s when you get the jitters.

•Are you saying you can live without stardom?

I don’t know. Yeah, probably. Yeah, quite happily. (Laughs)

•Dalai Lama? Doesn’t matter if somebody takes it all away from me?

No, it does matter if somebody takes it all away from me, because I feel my stardom is why I am where I am today financially, mentally also. So it has a lot to do with it. If God took it all suddenly away from me, he’d have taken a lot away from me . . . I’m not worried about stardom really, I’m worried about the little things that come with it, my financial status, my husband, my child, my family, my mental state.

•From whatever I know of your husband, you two are very different people.

We have very different takes on life. And I think we discuss a lot. We talk about a lot and at the same time we agree to disagree on a lot of stuff as well. And we don’t only talk about work. We talk about so much else. We talk about our entire family. His entire family, my entire family, which number in the hundreds. So it’s like we really have a lot to talk about.

•And what do you disagree most of all on?

We disagree most of all on small stuff. It’s really small stuff. It’s not big things. He will think very deeply about every step that he has to take.

•You ever fight over what film you or he will do and with whom?

Never.

•I’m going by colour supplements of newspapers: you shall not act with so and so, namely Shah Rukh Khan, in this case.

Never. I have to say my husband is really one progressive man in that respect.

•Tell me the most stupid thing anybody said or wrote about you in the media.