If she had said no, then the media would have said that she is curtailing the freedom of speech. So it was a no-win situation for her.'

'In order to save her from this embarrassment, I had initially decided that I will make an unauthorised film,' said Mundhra looking relaxed in a maroon shirt and grey trousers while chatting in Centaur Lake View Hotel here.

He is here to shoot a song for his forthcoming action thriller 'Chase', starring Udita Goswami and Anuj Saxena in the lead.

On probing further about the biopic, the filmmaker came out with a few things that he had told Sonia Gandhi when he had gone to meet her regarding the film.

'When I met Mrs. Gandhi, I told her that I don't have a political agenda. I'm fascinated by the fact that an Italian girl who had to go to London to learn English in Cambridge did not even know that time that one day she will be a leader in a completely different country where people speak a completely different language,' he explained.

Mundhra told her that he knows that she had first met her husband Rajiv Gandhi, who became prime minister later, at a varsity restaurant and that 'moment changed the history of India' - it is this moment that he wants to capture.

The 60-year-old filmmaker told IANS that Sonia Gandhi smiled when he told her that he knows that Rajiv Gandhi used to work in a bakery in London when he was a student and has even sold ice-creams.

The director said he will be contacting the Congress president some time again regarding the film.

(Ruchika Kher can be contacted at ruchika.k@ians.in)