Not many know Slumdog Millionaire (SM) is not only directed by Danny Boyle. Loveleen Tandon is the film's co-director. And she says she isn't perturbed by Boyle stealing all the limelight internationally.

"I don't mind at all. I've been traveling non –stop with the film. I've returned home in the last week of December."

Delhi-based casting director Loveleen Tandon says, "I started off as the casting director. But just before shooting, Danny asked me to hop on board as co-director. I'm there in the credits. But people here don't know about that."

She took on the challenging of co-directing the film because she got to cast three different set of child actors from three eras to which the films' protagonists belong.

"I had never seen a screenplay where three sets of actors got equal screen time to play the same character. I had to match the three sets of actors in every possibke way. Danny refused to shoot until we found all the nine actors.I couldn't sleep until I found the right kids.

I started casting in April 2007. Danny kept coming down to Mumbai to check out the actors. I got the youngest version of the child actors who finally grow up to be Salim and Latika straight from the slums."

Loveleen who has earlier served as casting directors for films by Mira Nair and Steven Spielberg, had a lot of arguments over the socio-cultural nuances of Boyle's cinema.

"Specially the fact that the kids had to speak in English. How could kids from Mumbai slums speak in English? It've become stagey. I suggested Danny turn the kids' dialogues in Hindi. I prepared a scratch tape for Danny with real slum kids."

Loveleen wrote about 30 percent of the film in Hindi. "Danny wanted to be culturally correct. He offered me the part of the co-director. I was blown away. I was never meant to be part of the shooting.

I didn't participate in the shooting of the scenes at the police station and the sets of KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati). I was out directing the second unit. On my own I shot all the scenes showing people shooting KBC all over the country.

Also the girl protagonist Latika had very sensitive sexually-suggestive scenes at age 13."

Loveleen was summoned to be part of those scenes. "SM is a very masculine film.Being part of the directorial team as co-director for SM was fine.

But now I want to direct my own film. I'm telling you this because I'm getting offers from abroad to be co-directors. I never intended to be a casting director. Mira Nair turned me into one for Monsoon Wedding.

People liked my work abroad and I kept getting offers from abroad. But my first film as a director would be in Hindi. That's the language I think in.It's a subject I've been harbouring for a year and will probably write it myself."

Loveleen says SM is a homage to the Hindi commercial cinema. "The writer Simon Beaufoy studied Salim-Javed's kind of cinema minutely."

Tell her the film lacks a sense of historicity and Loveleen defends the film. "The communal riots, for example, were meant to be in 1993 after the Babri Masjid incident. There was so much material Danny finally became ruthless...aage badhna ttha."