/> "Nobody knows the truth about what happened in the house... except me and Renee, because at the end of the day, it's just me and my daughter who form a world of our own inside that house."

That's Sushmita's traumatized confession, a month after she suddenly sacked eight of her most trusted staffers, including her driver.

The emotion still tumbles out, as for once, the stately and in-control Sushmita recalls the massive betrayal.

"What a birthday gift I've had," she laughs mirthlessly. "People whom I trusted blindly have let me down. It just turned my world upside down. Over the past decade I never questioned any of my staffers. They were all family to me. And I'm being called another Parveen Babi—may God bless her soul-- by gossip magazines for taking action that killed me from inside."

Apparently some of these banished members of Sushmita's household are now going around spreading vicious rumours about the lady of the house. "It's the classic case of people you trust turning against you. It happens to others all the time. But when it happened to me I wasn't prepared for it.

I was being cheated and lied to. My home was no longer safe for me and my child. If I acted immediately to save my world, does that make me strange? If yes, then so be it. I'd rather be strange than sorry."

The trauma of dealing with mass betrayal is compounded by the screaming headlines in a monthly that accuses her of abnormal behavior for firing her staff.

Sushmita laughs, "If protecting my house, my child and myself from people who have been indulging in financial and moral irregularities behind my back makes me abnormal then I seriously need to educated in normal behaviour. The minute I read the long article and I read mention of the fired staff I realized where it was coming from."

Strangely people who are still very close to Sushmita are being named among those who have left her house. "Neelam, who's like my sister, is also mentioned among the people I've sacked. That's absolute rubbish.

She's very much here. This effort to add meat to a story about my household crisis is just so misplaced. I've always been very open about my life. But then, why would I live inside a house if I wanted every aspect of my life to be under scrutiny?

I might as well live on the streets. That much privacy which I value inside my house cannot be taken away from me by eight people who obviously feel bitter about being asked to leave. And why just me?

This can happen to anybody. Or let me revise that, because I don't think anyone treats her staff as lovingly as I do. I guess I'm paying a price for welcoming them into my lives as family."