Taapsee Pannu: No, I don’t feel like an insider, but I think that’s an outsider syndrome that’s attached to most of us no matter how much successful most of us get but still somewhere down the line you feel you never know what’s going to happen with you if your few films don’t do well, maybe you know you’ll have to start from scratch, you don’t know if you’ll get more work or no. Somewhere that fear probably exists in most of us outsider’s minds for the longest time no matter how successful they get. I don’t think I’ve become an insider or I still think I’m not there in the inner circles that exist in the industry and that’s also got to do with the fact that I’m not very socially active in the industry beyond my workplace.

I do lose out on a lot of films that I could have gotten if I was active in certain social circuits. But then a lot of energy and effort would have gone into socialising in that way which, I don’t mind socialising, I am a very extrovert person, I can talk on a wrong number for a very long time, I’m that extrovert person. But socially active with an agenda in mind to get films is not something that I can look at myself in the mirror, that I’m being nice to people because I want work from them. That somehow doesn’t resonate with me.

That’s why I am extremely happy and friendly with everyone I work with, we go watch movies together, we chill together, I call people home for dinner, I got my new apartment, so I’ve called most of the people I’ve worked with for home for housewarming, I do all that but with people who I already have a rapport with. With an agenda I can’t make a rapport. So that is why I think I lose out on a few things. It’s a difficult thing for me to break that glass wall of penetrating a inner circle which I feel the only way I will be able to do it is through my work, is if eventually my work makes so much of noise that they don’t have an option other than to acknowledge my presence. So I think that’s the only way out for me.