I was very happy with that film. It brought about awareness about an important issue. The 1984 [anti-Sikh riots situation] isn't taught in schools. The good thing is that people have really appreciated the movie.

The director Shonali Bose was very supportive towards me as an actress. We had intense workshops in Los Angeles for three weeks prior to shooting.

So three weeks seems the standard preparation time for all your roles. Okay, so then there was Madhur Bhandarkar's Page 3. What was that like?

It was a great, fun film. What I liked about Page 3 was that it had a very different script. We shot for that over eight months. The main reason I was attracted to that film was that it was my first 'big' film. I mean, it was a small-budget movie, by Bollywood standards, but it was a big film for me.

Does the budget matter that much to you?

Well, it matters because there aren't too many constraints. You don't have the smaller tensions on the set. Things are done.