Since then, it has become his own private refuge -- a place he likes going to when he needs to unwind. "It has a couple of beautiful spots like `Chota Kashmir' and `Mini Khajiar', where it actually feels like you are in a hilly area. The New Zealand hostel is another quiet corner of the jungle. And Aarey's main office is a beautiful building with British architecture," he says. In fact, Shukla even used this building as a British Viceroy's office for a television pilot he shot some time ago.

And since he lives close by, he uses his spare time to drive into the woods, sit still andlisten to the birds. "Instead of going to Juhu beach, or having dinner at an expensive and pretentious restaurant, my wife and I prefer going to Aarey in the evenings. She has studied microbiology and tells me that this jungle has an amazing variety of plants," he says.

But for Shukla -- who's now acting in Subhash Ghai's Taal and Abbas-Mastan's Baadshah, and writing two films for Vikram Bhatt and Ramesh Sippy -- the thrill lies in venturing into the jungles at all times of the day and night and discovering new places. "The bylanes are quite scary and adventurous -- though not quite as harrowing as the highway traffic jams," he says.