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In India, the films are not looked upon just as entertainment. They're a way of life.

Movies are a big part of our Indian culture.

I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls.

A lot of people in India are not that into non-Indian films or Western films.

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to watch Bollywood films. There's a lot of colour and vibrancy to the Indian films.

Indian cinema needs all ingredients like emotion, action, sentiment and humour; it's not easy. It's easy to make a Hollywood film, as it goes with a pattern. Our cinema needs a lot of commercial ingredients. That's why I don't do many films.

Indian films are like our food or our sense of dress or our languages: there's a great variety, and it changes every 100 miles, but there is something in common, a national Indian essence, that binds them all together.

The Indian film industry is very, very vibrant. It is a mix like it is in Hollywood - there is a lot of highly commercial cinema.

Cinema is about people, and we are a very emotional people. That is why you see those ups and those downs and those colours. That is what Indian cinema is about.

There are large numbers of people in India below the poverty line; there are large numbers of people who lead a meager existence. They want to find a little escape from the hardships of life and come and watch something colorful and exciting and musical. Indian cinema provides that.