Daniel Craig auditioned for Rang De Basanti, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra reveals

The filmmaker adds, "Daniel Craig was my first choice, but he requested if we could allow some time as he was also being considered to be the next James Bond. The rest, as they say, is history".

Mehra also writes how he almost finalised Peter Gabriel, a founding member of the British rock band Genesis, for Rang De Basanti, but ultimately zeroed in on AR Rahman. "The music of RDB was the soul of the film; the songs AR created became de facto national anthems".

The Stranger in the Mirror, co-written by marketer-author Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta and published by Rupa, is full of anecdotes about Mehra's life.