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 •My guest this week is a star whose laughter can light up a billion hearts. Kajol, welcome to Walk the Talk. It has taken a lot of doing.

It has, it has taken you quite a lot of time as well.

•Yes, I remember, at one our Screen awards functions, I walked up to you and said, ‘Can I introduce myself?’ And you said, ‘No.’ (Laughs)

That sounds like me, actually.

•And I said that’s the one. What made you say yes (to being on this show), because I know you are very reticent about interviews.

You know, we are coming out with a movie right now, U Me Aur Hum, and I heard that you were an intelligent guy and I decided to find out for myself. (Laughs)

•Well, in terms of my credentials, I can say that I was absolutely in love with your mom Tanuja.

So am I. (Laughs) I know she is fantastic. She really is superb. That just shows you have superb taste, by the way, when you say that you love my mom.

•Does she talk to you about her movies?

She does, sometimes, but not recently, no. Not all that much. I think we talk to her a lot more now than she talks to us.

•Who have you taken after? Mom, grandmother, nobody?

Nobody, I would like to say. But I think it’s a little bit of everybody really. I can’t say that it’s one person. I truly believe that a child is made up of each and every one of her family, because sometimes I have people coming up to me and telling me, ‘Oh my God, you look so much like Nutan!’ Then I have someone telling me, ‘You look so much like your mom.’ And I have a third person coming up and telling me, ‘Oh my God, you look so much like your dad.’

•Your aunt Nutan was a great actor. But of a different type, very different from your mom.

Very different. In fact, when I grew up and I was able to appreciate them as actors, it took me aback because they were so different on screen. Nutan was beautiful, and mom was like an elf. And you could never imagine they were related. My mom was spontaneous: whenever she said anything, you believed her. She was on the sets of Do Chor and was dressed as a man, and my grandmother (Shobhna Samarth) walked up and kind of nodded at her and walked off and went to the make-up room. My mom realised that her mother had not recognised her. So she took off her moustache, her get-up, and walked into the room and said, ‘Hi, mom.’ And my grandmother said, ‘Tanu, you know I saw this boy on the sets and he looked so much like Jaideep’, who was my mother’s brother. My mother burst out laughing and said, ‘See what a good actress I am that even my mother could not recognise me.’

•She was different for her times. That was a time when everybody was so painted up. And everybody had to look the same way, and if I may say so, padded up. She was different. And you’ve been different as well. You set the trend of the dusky star.

It didn’t have much to do with dusky star . . . I just didn’t let my make-up man do all that much on me. So it’s just a question of laziness, rather than wanting to set a trend or hoping to make a statement of any sort.

•Do you remember any mistakes you committed? Which are the films you don’t really want to see?

I have some real jewels in my collection. I had a film called Chal, or Hote Hote Pyaar Ho Gaya, which went on for seven years. I went through five different dress designers, two boyfriends, so that was a long odyssey. When I watch it, I literally feel, ‘That was something.’ Every two years, the producer would revive it and bring it out of the closet and we’d see ghosts hanging around. That’s the big fat ruby. That’s Kohinoor stuck up there. Then I have Takhat, a tough love story, you wouldn’t even have heard of that.

•Forget the forgettable ones, talk about the big ones — Baazigar, DDLJ.

With Baazigar, I made a lot of friends, some of who are still my friends today. Shah Rukh Khan, Abbasbhai and Mustanbhai, their nephew Saifu. I had a blast doing the film. We never repeated that particular combination. The friends I made then were really the first friends I made.

•Is that when the gang started coming into shape?

The clique? I think it started a little earlier, it may have started with Baazigar. Karan (Johar), Adi (Chopra), and me were all friends. Shah Rukh came into the picture and we were generally friendly people. I believe you should work with people you trust. Sometimes you may not like the people you trust, but sometimes you may feel they are fantastic directors. I want to work with people I’ll be comfortable with, at the end of the day.

•Tell me some fun moments with Shah Rukh or Karan.

I fell down in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, hit my head, and lost my memory for three hours. When I got my memory back, Shah Rukh said, ‘You don’t remember, we tried to convince you that you were a junior artiste and that you were supposed to be dancing around the tree with us.’ I was like, ‘You all really made me believe I was a junior artiste?’ And he was like, ‘We said you were a junior artiste and you really believed us.’

•And Karan?