A sensitive topic like rape could be a precarious one to breach with children, one would assume. Yet, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra argues otherwise. "On one hand, there's a [perception] that grown-ups have of children's [understanding], on the other, there are the children who are [far more] perceptive than what we assume. They know what's going on in the world, and are more evolved than we were as kids," says the director, whose next, Mere Pyare Prime Minister, revolves around a resident of a slum, a single mother, who is raped when she goes to relieve herself in the open.

Discussing the subject of rape with them, he says, is best done with utmost honesty. "They responded to it in a mature fashion. Topics [such as these] are a taboo only [for] the upper middle class. [The less privileged] face life in its starkest form every day; they don't hide away from it," says the director, who banked on the residents of the slums to play supporting acts in his film, headlined by Anjali Patil and Om Kanojiya.