the lead role in a film by the renowned filmmaker manmohan desai whom i greatly admired i met him with no expectations but to my surprise he offered me the lead role in his upcoming teenage love story naturally i was thrilled and immediately accepted the offerunfortunately that particular film like many others that followed didnt materialize it was disappointing and disheartening nonetheless i have fond memories of my interactions with manji manmohan desai and ketan desai manmohans son whom i still maintain occasional contact with they were warm encouraging and wonderful individuals although the film didnt happen i will always cherish the experienceundeterred i went on to sign another film by a prominent producer of that time balaj nilani ji however that project also failed to take off finally my debut film aa gale lag jaa became the first film i actually started working on at that point my main aspiration was simply to get a film started as i had been waiting for three years without any progress once the film commenced we fared well and my aspiration evolved into wanting to continue working and taking on good roles with talented directors i also did a film called the dawn which had mithun chakraborty ji and sonali bendreafter the success of papa kehte hain i signed several films that unfortunately didnt materialize some people mistakenly believe that i didnt sign any movies during that time but the truth is that i did sign them they just didnt go into production therefore the number of films i eventually worked on was fewer than anticipated my approach was to go with the flow rather than follow a specific plan focusing on collaborating with good directors and portraying interesting charactersyou grew up in mumbai but your son sidak is growing up in new york are there times when you think about him missing out on things that you grew up withi am raising my son in new york but i dont believe theres much difference from mumbai both cities are vibrant and crowded with many people and apartment buildings he has friends from our building and in school just like i did in that sense its quite similar however what matters most to me is his happiness whether were in mumbai new york or anywhere else life takes us as long as my child is content thats my ultimate goal as a parent i strive to provide the best upbringing regardless of our location honestly i dont see him missing out on much beyond thatyou have revealed in past interviews about 35 to 40 projects that you signed but they never took off tell us something about those films it is true at one point i sat down and attempted to count the number of acting projects i had signed during the 90s and early 2000s many commitments were made through handshakes rather than formal legal contracts it was a trustbased system where both parties agreed to work together in those