I never left my sexy image:Neha Dhupia

Q: Tell us about your character in 'Ek chalis Ki Last Local'?

A: I play a character named Madhu. She is the girl who is coming back from her friend's engagement and she misses her last local. She has to go to vikhorli and tries desperately hard to do so.

Here at the station she meets Nilesh, who works in a call centre and has also missed his last local. The they earn two and a half crore in two and a half hours.

Q: So do you people divide the money?

A:(Laughs aloud) We will do that in the sequel. Don't take it seriously there is nothing planned yet.

Q: You had earlier said that you had a dream of travelling in the locals so you took up this film?

A: I have I don't see a connection between my dream and the film. I have traveled a lot on trains. Actually we lived in Delho and the rest of our family lived in kerala.

So I used to travel a lot between the two places. As far as the locals are concerned, I came to Mumbai after I was crowned Miss India. So I did not have to travel on trains.

Q: The locals are the lifeline of Mumbai and you sure would have understood it by now. What else did you learn about Mumbai?

A:I'm glad you asked me this question. I have learnt a lot about Mumbai as a city. There were lots of good and bad. There was an incident when we were shooting at Bhayandar in the middle of the night and there was a huge crowd who was pelting stones at us because we were not meeting them.

It was overwhelming for me but we had a job to finish before sunrise and could not give them so much time. There was a day we were shooting in a chawl and this is the place where it is like a maze, one you get in but cannot come out.

So we had a lot of difficulty since it was getting hot and mucky and we needed tea. The people there were helping us out in the wee hours of the morning. There was no reason for them to do that but it showed the spirit of Mumbai, the helping attitude for the people.

Q:How was your experience in the chawls?

A: When I saw the chawls, I was shocked. I realized that even after making money why people want to come back to the place. There is so much warmth there. Every one knows everyone and ready to help. I saw six people sleeping in a row in a small house! The more I know the more I learn, the more I discover, the more I want to stay in the city.

Q: Tell us about your look.

A: well I was very bored of wearing the same costume everyday. There is only one costume but in that I had to break the monotony by knocking off the ear ring, change the style of the dupatta, and open the hair out just to look different. It is Indian look but a grungy Indian look. I have never had this look before. we have tried to make the character look as convincing as possible.

Q:What are your upcoming projects?

A: There is 'shootout at Lokhandwala' where I'm opposite Sanjay Dutt, 'Mithiya' with Naseer Saab and Ranveer Shourie, 'Kuch Love Drama' where I play Rajpal Yadav's wife. Here my character's name is Shanti but I actually do not have any shanti in life and Rajpal's name is Santosh and he does not have that too.

Q: You had a sex image which you have changed. Has it affected your career?

A: No, it has not affected anything; it has just made me better. It wasn't a sort of departure from the sex symbol and landing into doing something else. The facts is that as long as work has taken off for me I' happy.

You know people are recognizing me as somebody who does different things as an actress and who is involved in playing her character 100%. And I'm enjoying that.

Honestly, today I'm a lot more confident and talented than what I was yesterday and as long as every day is better at work, whether it is for you of for me, we are going to be happy. (SAMPURN)