Shooting in India has become more professional and it has helped us a lot.

Cricket is a self-sustaining industry; but corporates need to realise that other sports don’t have that luxury. This is the time when they need to invest, and keep the faith. Every sport has the potential to create world champions. Imagine India as a country full of world champions. Why imagine? Let’s just make it happen.

Not much is done to promote non-cricket sports in India. There is a lot of talk about how sports needs to reach the grassroots and how it should be introduced as a subject in school, but nothing has been done to that effect.

More than 30 years ago, when I had embarked upon the fight against child labour, it was not even considered an issue worth any discussion. It was accepted as a way of life in India, much like it was in other countries. Today, no country or business or society can throw this issue away.

India has hundreds of problems and millions of solutions.

What is most amusing and can happen only in India is that the most posh and big households that I’ve seen in Mumbai, the ‘big city’, will have their balconies and windows festooned with rows of baniyans and tauliyas hanging on them.

A. R. Rahman is truly India’s Mozart. His music is celebrated worldwide.

I would love to go to India. And also someday, I want to have a family. That’s my bucket-list.

Today, of course, the world’s perception of India has changed tremendously. People understand its role in world affairs; they understand that India is not some backward nation. In fact, it is the fastest growing free-market democracy in the world today, and that says it all.

There’s a big difference between how the Anglo-Saxon world views India, or viewed India, and the way Europe views India.

India can’t be looked at as a country; it’s more of a continent.

In a country like India, we don’t want to put everyone in one big mixture. We have a different language, culture and cuisine for each region, even though we are united in the larger context. We are more like a fruit salad, where each ingredient has its own specialty, each fruit its distinct flavor, and together, the salad makes a tasty dish, without losing the individuality of each constituent.

I spent a lot of time with Rahul Dravid, working on my game and chatting about cricket. He helped me a lot in the games I played for India ‘A.’

I got some time off from international cricket so I could come back to India and reflect on what was not going right for me.

Fortunately, I got to play some India ‘A’ games, and some games where the pressure was a little less, so that I can focus on my skill and my technique.

For anybody, faith and belief are everything you have. Nobody gave me the India cap; nobody taught me to go and get runs. It’s a belief I had in myself.

The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favorable conditions, they built a character – meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere have existed except in India.

Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously—the midday sun always excepted.

I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam.

All of India is my family.

Today in India there are all sections of people, as the BJP realized when the poor voted them out.

I went to India and was quite taken with it. There’s a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.