Like any little girl's dream..

I never expected to be Miss India. Miss India was just an excuse it was a vacation for me. I was taking a year between high school and college and I came to Bombay just for fun, and I would go back in a month's time to tuitions and applying for a couple of scholarships and stuff.

But I won. more than anything I was really amazed it happened because it was beyond comprehension at that point.

Every birthday I wanted to be something different, from an engineer, dancer, to a house maid!
I was a science student, so I could do anything that was science oriented. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and that's why I had taken up science and maths.

I always had very interesting ideas about my profession but never an actor. Now, I've started believing in the saying “Man proposes God disposes,” it always happens to me. Every time I plan something, something else happens!

I love with an incredible passion being an actor. I wake up every morning saying wow I have to go to work!

When I was shooting for my first film I hated it. I thought I want this film over and I just want to go back to school and study. I used to love studying. I never understood the dynamics behind film making, so that took me a little while.

Once I started understanding the craft a little better I fell in love with my profession.

When I first saw myself on the big screen I couldn't relate to me as being myself, and it took me completely by shock. I realised that I have to be careful of so many things. Your little face gets blown up to about a thousand times of what you are, that scared the living daylights out of me.

I am extremely critical about myself but I cannot at all times be objective. So I have my friends and family to tell me if it's working out or not.

I rely on my director a lot. Beyond a point, I guess you've shot the film and there's nothing you can do. You just have to do better in the next one.

I think I'm very complex but I'm not complicated because I know where I'm headed but it takes me awhile to get there. I'm very emotional, I'm extremely sensitive, I'm very focussed and it could be anything. Failure is not an option in my life.

I come from a very middle class background. I'm an army officer's daughter. This kind of a life doesn't register, it's show biz or you're a huge celebrity or whatever.

For me it's just going to work, coming back home, hanging with my family and a 9 to 10 kind of a job, if you look at it that way then it will keep you grounded.

My mum always told me that you need to remember where you came from because if your roots are not strong then your tree will fall.

Coming from an army background, makes you value even two minutes of your time. I hate people wasting my time, so I don't do it to them. I think time is a very important factor in people's lives.

I do see myself in my film career for at least six-seven years but my non-film plans will be to get married at some point. I know it's not at least for another four years as I'm not mentally prepared for it. I'm still 12 in my head!

I don't know if I'm a fabulous singer or not but I would sing because I really enjoy it. I don't know when, how, where because right now I'm tied up with films and I think at some point I may take it seriously.

Films just happened. It's just so many things that are going on in life that I never sit down and think what happened to me when I was 17. It was like any little girl's dream...