Inspired by life around her
Multi-faceted Personality
Deepti Naval has been well respected in the Indian film industry for the last 33 years ever since she made her debut with Junoon.
The multi-talented actress has explored different art forms since and has been a film actor, poet and painter.Recently, she even tried a stint as a daily soap actress on television. But her most recent accomplishment has been the penning down and artwork of ‘The Mad Tibetan – Stories from Then and Now,’ a collection of short stories, which was recently launched in the City.
“As you live your life, there are a lot of things that you come across that leave an indelible impression on your mind — people that you meet, words that are uttered, personalities and incidents. Somewhere, you retain those in your head and you feel that you need to write about them,” says Deepti. “You can recreate those through writing and that idea of recreating something is really exciting for me,” she adds.
‘The Mad Tibetan’ is one of the stories in the anthology and Deepti’s personal favourite, justifying the title of the book.
There are 11 short stories in the entire collection and out of those, only two or three stories are about her interactions with people she has met personally. “It’s fiction inspired from life around me,” says Deepti, emphasising that it is only those few stories that are fictionalised personal experiences.
Each story in the book begins with one of her paintings, lending it visual impact before her words can do their magic. “I paint landscapes, figurative, portraits of my friends, self-portraits…That is also me. But I feel that writing is intimately more who I am, given the kind of writing I do. It’s not ‘Harry Potter’ and not all imagination. It’s about things that leave a deep impression and I want to share that with people,” says the writer.
Before this anthology, she had published a collection of her Hindi poems, entitled Lamha Lamha, in 1981, which was fairly well-received.
She writes short stories and poems, she paints, and she has had a long standing career in parallel cinema.
When asked her the order of preference of these three activities, she answers firmly, “It’s not in any order. Everything has its own credibility and stands its own ground. When I’m acting, I’m acting. I’m fully there. When I’m writing, I’m fully there too.”
Audiences would remember her latest performance as Farhan Akhtar’s mother in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. She is also busy directing her first film — Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Baarish, which stars Manisha Koirala.
