I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.

I've never sought to be on an A-list. I've done my own thing and my own thing has thankfully now brought me an audience.

What is really important to me is a sense of humour and a mischief about life. Life is just too boring otherwise.

It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for 'Monsoon Wedding,' and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.

'Salaam Bombay' didn't put a halo on the poor. Instead, it said that they will teach us how to live.

Post 9/11, so much has changed in New York that it does not give you that homely feeling which it did before.

Every film is a political act; it's how you see the world.