I still am a kid I think, I don’t want to grow up. This child-woman thing is what I am. There’s a bit of yesterday in me and a bit of tomorrow.

It’s 4 a.m. – yawn time in Mumbai; 12 p.m. almost yawn time in London. I am clinging on to the receiver as though to hold and will the person on the other end, to stay there. Verve creative director, Falguni Sheth, is in her PJs with a black Verve T-shirt on, breathing down my largely still back. We have done the rounds of a movie downtown, coffee at a largely isolated five-star restaurant and flipped TV channels endlessly in a bid to stay awake for our scheduled dawn telephone interview with Aishwarya Rai, on an outdoor shoot in London for Kyun? Ho Gaya Na, some crucial sleep hours after us. The vagaries of time and a Bollywood diva have kept us awake and kicking.

Earlier, in Cannes, the Verve team, including editor publisher, Anuradha Mahindra and Falguni, observed the dazzling spectacle that Rai made at the famous film festival, in prestigious place on its jury. She shimmered, she shone and indeed outshone Hollywood’s star cast (and this had little to do with the Chopard diamonds that she was draped with, the jewellers hoping to make a breakthrough in India) notwithstanding the local paparazzi which pouted and cried about the whys, whats and wherefores. They were, in fact, questioning the very validity of her being there. At the Carlton Hotel, at the Bollywood Night party ‘she was completely mobbed. The entire party seemed to be following her’, says a young, usually-cynical invitee who however, was surprised at Aishwarya’s ‘smallness’. Come on, you guys in black and white print, don’t you know a larger-than-life diva when you see one? Even if you do not quite agree with the cut, colour and shape of her very personal wardrobe.

So, Verve was there on the beach beside the colourful and celebrity-infected Croisette, amongst the beach chairs and the curious spectators (all of whom had to be cleared by the Hôtel Martinez’s guards), to capture the former Miss World in all her glory. (Unfortunately, we had to leave her bodyguards out of personal photographer, Farrokh Chothia’s carefully-crafted frames.) The paparazzi loved her, Vivek Oberoi shadowed her, her mother extended her moral support, the Hindujas feted her at their sea-facing villa, jet-setting photographer Jean-Daniel Lorieux, who has worked with international faces, could not stop commenting on how beautiful she was.

Having had a taste of Cannes already the year before with the showing of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, Rai obviously knew what to expect. Already, she has chalked up film successes in the hit, Devdas (2002), the Tamil film, Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), super hit Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) while she had started her career with some forgettables like Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar (1997) and Jeans (1998). She is now poised at the brink of the international scene, with a role in Ketan Mehta’s big-budget, international opus, The Rising, set against the backdrop of the first war of Independence, in 1857. She is also in Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice, The Bollywood Musical, scheduled to start shooting in mid July. Imminent releases are Rohan Sippy’s Kuch Na Kaho and Rituparno Ghosh’s Chhoker Bali.

Fatalistic to the core, not one to air her grievances, supposedly unfortunate in love (her escapades with Salman Khan are now legion), Rai rarely speaks to the press who have painted her as the quintessential ‘ice maiden’. Here, we present you with some things you ought to know about Aishwarya Rai, mainly in her own words…

Aishwarya Rai’s voice takes on a certain buzz, a certain charge, as she speaks of her Cannes experience. This had obviously been good for her, and fun too. “The best thing about Cannes is the very reason I was there, as a member of the jury. It has been a very humbling experience to represent the Indian film fraternity and I cherish it. I was on familiar terrain from the year before but this, my very first jury experience, was at the mother of all festivals, making it a very special experience by itself. I have never watched so many movies at a go. I have actually come away watching 23 movies in 13 days which was incredible…I have always wanted to do this.

“And then, to deliberate on the movies as a team was a special experience – at the jury meets. The jury had bonded so well and somewhere in our analysis, we found ourselves thinking similar things. We said that this should be the jury that should travel together for all festivals! I was the youngest (at 29) but nobody treated me like that. There was always mutual respect and warmth.

“Meg Ryan is wonderful. There were a lot of people being seemingly very genuine – Patrice Chereau, Karin Viard – every one of them were seemingly very genuine because how far can you get from being real when you are being asked to be part of a jury? On the last day, we did our own spontaneous speeches, each one of us, and I said that I feel a growth from the time of the first jury meet. Meg Ryan said that she had discovered that she could actually watch four movies on a weekend. I had taken these little innately Indian things and gifted them to everyone and they were so touched. If Miss World was special, this is something I really, really treasure. I started out feeling very humbled and came away thanking God for this."

She discovered all the adverse press back home, only after she returned.

Which she is glad about – not knowing while she was in Cannes. She had discovered so much respect, so many good things, so much that was positive from the media there. Even on her way to the airport she had been asked, ‘Why do you think you were chosen when there are so many others?’

“I am not even going to answer that.” She says, now, “I am not going to sit and focus on this. I am going to focus on my reality. I just have to do my karma and get on with it. I have to just focus on keeping the faith.” She has her own twist on being religious.

“Religion is a way of life. It’s what you do in your day to day life. It’s not necessarily what you are born into.”

She is excited about Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice, The Bollywood Musical but, is this film in English, her first step towards Hollywood?

She obviously hates this question. This Hollywood thing has been debated upon much too much. Will Aishwarya make it to Hollywood? Is the Indian diva meant for greater things?

“I don’t know whether I sound like a dampener but I have always been open to doing cinema. Language is not the issue, whether it means doing movies in Tamil, Bengali, Hindi or English. Gurinder has done a wonderful job with the script. Titles of Hollywood, Bollywood or Tollywood…it’s cinema, man – that’s what it really is for me.

And it’s kudos about being (or not being) the Bond girl.

Does she really care? “For me, more than the labels attached to it, it is about me as an actor, not about the hoopla attached around it but what I will be doing out there as an artiste. Just like I am about all my assignments….”

Being called the most beautiful woman in the world really makes her squirm. She’s never going to get used to it!

“No, please! Don’t ask me that question. I am still shy about this and I don’t know how to react. I tend to make a joke about it and brush it aside. They are all opinions – good, bad, ugly…. Don’t fly high with the good ones and don’t get down into the dumps with the bad ones. Enjoy the good ones, feel the sting of the bad ones, heal yourself and move on with the flow of life since everything is transient, nothing lasts forever. So, cherish now, the precious present…”

Her voice has acquired this almost trance-like quiet as she grapples with the contradictions in her life. The ‘very highs’ and the ‘very lows’. She is destiny’s child, never quite sure which way she is headed but able, somehow, to keep herself rooted, grounded in an almost fierce sense of reality. And then the spell is broken. She is ‘she’ again, the film star with a reporter glued to the other end of a long distance telephone line, on a cold and very wet (she is damp from a hot shower even as she speaks) London late evening. And, she laughs out loud, as though at herself. “Man, put me in a couch yaar… come on.” Have a heart, she seems to be saying.

She wants her mother around her, wherever she is. "Where’s Mummy?" she repeated, in Cannes.

“I still am (a kid) I think and I don’t want to grow up. This child-woman thing is what I am. There is a bit of yesterday in me and a bit of tomorrow.”

What was she like as a small girl, while in school, at home? She admits to being a quick learner, very talkative, she started talking very early. “I was real talkative,” she recalls. “Then I went through the stage of being docile sister. In college…I don’t really want to go into all this.” Okay, Ash, since it is nearing 4.30 a.m. I’m going to let you off the hook, this time around.

She sometimes surprises herself on screen.

So, how does the world’s most beautiful woman (sorry Ash, can’t resist that one) feel when she sees herself on screen? Is it ‘Wow’ or ‘Wow!’?

“Sometimes, it does go, ‘Ya, is that me?’ It’s strange with me. I have to watch the movie at least a couple of times. In the initial years, at the first viewing, I would go over the memories of making the movie. After that, you get down to really critiquing your own performance. Then, actually watching the performance. And then finally, the whole movie comes together. This would happen over more than a couple of times of viewing the film. Today, it would happen in a viewing or two.

“Sometimes, you go through ‘How did I do that?’ But, you always feel you could have done better.”

She isn’t going to say which of her two finest roles – Nandini in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Paro in Devdas – is closer to who she is. Not yet!

“This I shall leave for my autobiography – keep everyone guessing.” What she will say, however, is: “I am Everywoman. I am getting more and more convinced about it.”

She met Robert de Niro and it only struck her after!

“Ya, actually it was wonderful. But it only struck me after the meeting was over. For years, whenever I was asked who my favourite actor was, I always said his name. He was like an elder who has this ocean of experience. To be able to give that kind of time, to make that connection, to keep reiterating that I should be presented in the right way because of the niche that I have made in my own country…from someone I didn’t even know. Of course, there were those nuances which reminded you that I was talking to Robert de Niro…!”

It is 4.45 a.m. Time to sign off. Time to say g’night as the rest of Mumbai awakens.