Two things define actor Rahul Bose: his vow never to work in a mainstream film and his detachment towards everything which includes not owning a house, a car, not even wearing a watch.

"I will never work in a mainstream film in Bollywood or anywhere else in the world, in any language," Bose told in an interview here. "And keeping away from any sort of attachment is my very personal journey, it's very intrinsic to the way I am and the happiness that I seek."

The actor, who has done much applauded films like "Mr and Mrs Iyer" and "Jhankar Beats", is now working on three films, Buddhadeb Dasgupta's "Kalpurush", Aparna Sen's "15, Park Avenue" and "Silsilay".

In "Kalpurush", he plays a diehard romantic, with a failed marriage, a clandestine affair, a man whose life is going nowhere but he retains this quixotic viewpoint. He is paired opposite Sameera Reddy, and Mithun Chakraborty essays the role of his father.

Bose is acting as the fiancé of Konkona Sen's schizophrenic character in "15, Park Avenue", while he is part of the male team (along with Jimmy Shergill, Kay Kay Menon and Ashmit Patel) in Khalid Mohammed's "Silsilay" about the lives of four women.

"All the films are very different from what mainstream cinema is all about and that's why they fascinate me," said Bose.

Bollywood's recent popularity abroad doesn't impress Bose much.

"I don't think anyone is saying that Bollywood is brilliant and powerful cinema. What people are saying is that Bollywood represents a different strand of cinema which is an add-on to the different forms of cinema around the world," he said.

"In that sense there is relevance of Bollywood. Also the world is interested in Bollywood because today the world is interested about all things Indian, like all things Chinese.

"If India becomes the world's most powerful country, then our clothes, culture, cinema, food would be adopted around the world. This is exactly what happened to the US."

Bose though will keep out of all the hype and concentrate on writing the film he would be directing next. "It will be a dark, surreal film. You should see something new from me in about 18 months."

He is also looking at doing more theatre and perhaps even an ad or two.

"I began with theatre and would love to go back to it. I certainly will do more theatre. As for ads, I don't mind once in a while - the world of advertising gave me a lot, it's just that I moved on to something that I loved even more."

But there's one thing that he doesn't want to touch - television.

"Indian television is run by very unintelligent people, it's not something that I want to do," said Bose, who rose to fame on the TV soap "A Mouthful of Sky". "In its current format, TV is not very interesting to me."