Through the generous praise and the gargantuan criticism, has walked Vidya Balan. She tells Shubarna Mukerji Shu that it’s been worth it all…

The day I was to meet Vidya Balan for our interview, the papers too were surprisingly filled with her. If she wasn't making headlines in tabloids for being perhaps the only actress who has other actresses as friends, she was sitting up straight and answering myriad questions on underage driving or simply making the page pretty! But she was all over. It was like the entire media was reminding me of my upcoming rendezvous. More than the coincidence I was pleased to see new pictures of the actress and in clothes that looked fabulous on her… in other words, for the brief period that she had kept herself busy shooting for ISHQIYAN, she, to me, seemed to have landed up on a decent designer….felt like she finally had it all figured out. When I got into her car, I just had to know… whether she has really figured it all out finally, because everyone who had faith in her has been waiting for a whole year for that to happen! She sat there wearing a lovely white salwar-kameez with a colorful dupatta, a very standard bet in clothes, but looking gorgeous and smiling brightly… “I don't know if I have figured things out for myself. But people are coming up to me and telling me that it is good to have me back… Funny thing, because I was pretty much around when KISMET KONNECTION released! After that, I got busy with ISHQIYAN. It wasn't like I went off somewhere to be away intentionally. But I’m enjoying the concern they show me, glad to know I was missed!”   "I do get lonely; It's most natural. It is not like I have never had a guy in my life so I know exactly what I am missing too..."      It has hardly been much time since her last release, but yes, if you see her today, you see a change. There is calmness on her face…instead of the looming uncertainty, there is finally composure! Best thing is she is not trying to fit into the cliché Hindi film actress mould…. The long, dangling earrings were happily bobbing around her neck, while the car rode away. She was giving it a thought… or so I thought. “You are bang on, I hadn't lost perspective; I lacked it! But I am glad I went through that period of questioning. It’s like until you trip, you don't understand balance. And today therefore I am surer of myself. There was this book I was reading called 'Notes to Myself'. There was a quote which I would like to share; maybe that's how you will understand my state of mind more clearly… ‘What matters is not the caring but the way that I care. Spending all morning in front of the bathroom mirror is not really caring what people think. It is in fact an unwillingness to let people think. The attention I give to what I wear, the length of my hair, how much I weigh etc… is designed to control what people think…’”