Q1. Even before you saw yourself as a painter, what was it that you had an urge to draw?

A1. At eight I used to draw ballerinas, elephants, hats, cowboys and Heady Lamaar.

Q2. Of the different phases and subjects, which one remains in your memory as the most alluring? And can you say why?

A2. Alluring is hardly a word a painter would attach to her own work but I hark back to a phase of pregnant Madonna (’65) which surprise me yet.

Q3. Why is this chosen painting among your finest works? What did you enjoy painting the most in it?

A3. I painted this after an evening of classical Indian music at the house of the French Cultural Attache Vincent Grimaud. The house had a mock ‘30s décor that, complete with fake marble pillars and a tongue-in-cheek collection of bizarre objects from lizards to the Kamadhenu pictured here. I like this painting enough to keep it because it contains so many of the elements I aspire to record, a sense of somber mysteriousness that mocks itself within the same canvas and references to the past contained in an essentially contemporary format.

Q4. What, in retrospect, do you think has remained your greatest shortcoming?

A4. My greatest shortcoming is stopping short as a concession of other people’s sensibilities, a trait that is a direct result of being a well-bred Indian woman, a trait that I abhor in myself and, as a whole, it is probably too late to transcend.