"When you hear you are going to get the award, you are naturally thrilled," he says with a laugh. "It is a huge award, the highest award given by the government. But then you also get a little worried. Such awards are given mostly to people at the end of their career. But I am a very active director -- and I wonder if they want me to retire!

"Apart from the film I'm shooting right now, called Mahadev, I am developing three very different projects -- one is about a mysterious woman who is her own person in a male dominated society (a project loosely inspired by the opera Carmen, and set in a community of musicians and folk artists in Rajasthan).

"Then, there is a big canvas film based on a little known but highly effective spy Noor Inayat Khan, whose parents had brought her up with Sufi traditions, and who helped the British against the Germans during World War II. And then, there is the Buddha project."

Text: Arthur J Pais

In the picture: Shyam Benegal listens to a question during a press conference to announce a historic movie based on the life of Lord Gautam Buddha in Mumbai.