Aishwarya Rai has seldom sounded happier. She has just about wrapped up shooting for Paul Berges' much talked about Mistress Of Spices in England. And now she leaves for the US again.

"Can you imagine? We've almost finished the entire shoot in about a month!

Now we shoot for a week in San Francisco and the film is ready to roll out. It didn't feel like shooting at all. Gurinder Chadha's unit is like family after Bride & Prejudice.

Today (Wednesday), when we all packed up to proceed to the US, we didn't feel like we had shot a movie. It was a picnic, honestly!" gushes Ash.

Ash is absolutely gung-ho about her character in Mistress Of Spices. "I worked really hard on Tilo's (the character) look. There was no time to prepare, no rehearsals; we had to do it on our own.

So I had to work out Tilo's graph, her clothes, her attitude. Of course, Gurinder and Paul had their own idea of the way she needed to be projected and I respected that. I'm always the director's actress."

Mistress Of Spices tackles the age-old relationship between the Indian woman and spices. Says Ash, "Aromas from my mother's kitchen came alive in this film. Paul has gone to great lengths to connect spices with human perceptions. Mistress Of Spices tickles the palate."

Ash is very happy with the attention she's getting in the US for Bride & Prejudice, especially after the not-so-flattering attention the film and Ash got back home. "We all know that was pre-meditated.

After seeing the response in the US, I feel like I'm back to where I was when I started out as Miss World ten years ago — the same attention and the unbiased critical overview. Even before Bride & Prejudice, the West noticed me as an actress in Devdas, Kuch Na Kaho, Raincoat and Chokher Bali.

So Bride & Prejudice has been the culmination of a journey that began in Cannes when Sanjay Bhansali, Shah Rukh and I took Devdas there. The US has been wonderful," says the actress.

And she was happy about the fact that the Western media wrote about her clothes and her appearance and not about her giggling, which a part of the Indian media seems obsessed with.

"Honestly, this is how I've been all along. In fact, photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha wrote about my giggling habit in his book several years ago. So it isn't an overnight affectation I've acquired as part of my image. Grant me more substance than that!"

And substance is what Ash is looking for in her roles as an actress. Does it feel good carrying Bollywood to the West? "It sure does! But wasn't I doing that all along even when I was a model and Miss World?"