He’s almost done with his India trip when we speak to Matt Damon . The Bourne Series actor’s hush-hush visit – most of the Indian media was expecting him in September – saw him visit Pondicherry, Chennai and Bangalore to check on Water.org’s projects. Co-founded by Damon, the organisation works toward providing clean water and sanitation to villages.“I’ve just been meeting people in those communities and hearing their stories,” says Damon, adding, “I love it here in India. I am actually driving in Mumbai right now. I haven’t been here in 10 years. It’s incredible to be back. Last time, I visited Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi.”Damon and Ben Affleck go back a long way. They both wrote the screenplay for and acted in Good Will Hunting in 1997, which won them an Oscar for Best Screenplay. “Good Will Hunting is probably my favourite role, just because we wrote it, and it put both Ben and me on the map. That will also be the one role that’s nearest and dearest to my heart.”Sixteen years later, he still has his buddy’s back. While the studios’ decision to sign Affleck on as Batman has brought on a meltdown on Twitter and prompted some overzealous fans to send ‘Make it illegal for Ben Affleck to play Batman’ petitions to the White House, Damon thinks the actor will be “terrific” in the role. “I think it will be great. It will be terrific. I know there are a lot of people grousing on the internet. I just think it’s kind of funny. You know, he’s not playing King Lear. It’s Batman! Certainly within his skill set. If anybody saw Argo or The Town, and all the work he’s been doing lately, it’s way more nuanced and interesting and way more difficult than Batman! Batman just sits there with his cowl over his head and whispers in a kinda gruff voice at people. Bruce Wayne is the more challenging part of the role, and Ben will be great at that.”But as perfect – and obvious – as it would be for Damon to then play Robin to Ben’s Batman, the actor laughs it off. “I am a little older than Ben. I never saw Robin as older than Batman. Somebody sent me a picture actually (of his face photoshopped on Robin’s body and Ben’s on Batman’s). It was really funny. But it’s safe to say I won’t be Robin.”Does this level of furore over an actor’s appointment to a franchise seem justified to Damon, who too was replaced as the face of the Bourne Series by Jeremy Renner ? “They were just trying to revitalise that franchise and I didn’t mind at all. It didn’t have anything to do with the movie that I made. It makes sense for a studio to keep those franchises as alive as they can, it makes business sense for them. I don’t begrudge anybody that. I am a huge fan of Jeremy. I don’t equate my Bourne movie with his. He didn’t play the part of Jason Bourne . It’s a totally different thing.”“I’ve been eating nothing but Indian food since I landed. I love it! That’s kind of a luxury for me, eating all the local food,” he says. As he struggles to pronounce the names of dishes, he declared, “I just love anything that’s curried. I love spice too. I like it a bit hot.”As for the reason he’s never seen a Bollywood movie? He blames it all on his 7-year-old daughter. “I literally haven’t seen a Hollywood movie or a Bollywood movie since my seven-and-a-half year old was born. It’s been like a blur of sleepless nights and diapers for seven years. My wife and I are constantly bemoaning the fact that we never see enough movies, but if I could have some suggestions, I could maybe start on the plane ride back home.”When he isn’t involved in several of his philanthropic projects, Damon’s busy being one of the most politically vocal celebs in Hollywood. “Obama broke up with me,” he said recently, while expressing displeasure over the US president’s policies, while in an earlier interview he’d been quoted as saying, “You know, a one-term president with some b***s who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better”.His latest summer sci-fi blockbuster movie, Elysium, too has been dubbed as “Matt Damon’s Sci-Fi Socialism” and “heavy-handed political propaganda” by several publications, ruffling Republican feathers with its message on universal healthcare, poverty and immigration.“It’s not heavy-handed,” he promises, explaining, “It’s more like any good science fiction. You can set it in the future or you can make it in a galaxy a long time ago, far, far away but you’re really talking about the world that we live in and there are a lot of things that are resonant, like inequality, and the haves and have-nots.”