No one ever indoctrinated me.

I had recently had the impression they were changing - not so much by becoming less pro-Pakistan as by becoming less anti-India. I was wrong. My visit to [Richard] Nixon did anything but avert the war.

Little by little I changed my mind, and when I was about eighteen, I began to consider the possibility of getting married. Not to have a husband, but to have children.

The future doesn't frighten me, even if it threatens to be full of other difficulties.

The struggle for independence here has been conducted in equal measure by men and by women. And when we got our independence, no one forgot that. In the Western world, on the other hand, nothing of the kind has ever happened - women have participated, yes, but revolutions have always been made by men alone.

I've always been able to do what I wanted. On the other hand, my mother was. She considered the fact of being a woman a great disadvantage. She had her reasons. In her day women lived in seclusion - in almost all Indian states they couldn't even show themselves on the street.

In India people can't stomach this attitude of mine, and when I say, 'Hurry up, let's get to the point,' they feel hurt.