Is it always your own life or does your aesthetics sometimes follow what happened to another person? I know you’ve directed a television serial, so – d’you sometimes become the camera and simply watch the characters in action?ĭeepti: Yes, all my stories come from real life. RS: I’ve heard some of your poems on YouTube I’ve read some of your stories, and though we don’t have the visa yet, we will soon have entry into that country when your memoirs are launched: A Country Called Childhood - I love the name!Īll your stories and certainly your poems come out of your lived life. The second, when she filters it, takes the essence in a poem and relives it.” First, when she actually lands in a situation and takes the full experience of life. So, although I cherish every memory of Miss Chamko in Chashme Baddoor (1981, As Far be the Evil eye) of Sandhya Sabnis in Katha (1982, Stories) of Mahatmain in Damul (1985, Bonded Until Death) of Ek Aur Panchavati (1986, One More Panchavati ) where she acted with my father, Nabendu Ghosh of Memories in March (2010) and Listen.Amaya (2013), I decided to ignore the actress and bring to the fore the writer Deepti Naval, of whom Gulzar wrote in the Preface to Black Wind and Other poems (2004), her poetry collection: “She has her brains in her heart, or her heart in her head. “Who’s this writer? The actor Deepti Naval? Didn’t know that!” In fact, some of the youngsters in the audience – which was studded with stars of Indian Cinema like Sai Paranjpye, Goutam Ghose and Atul Tiwari – didn’t expect the actress to be there, in the International Festival of Literature organised by the Sahitya Akademi, and hosted by the Ministry of Culture to mark 75 Years of Independence. The literary face of Deepti Naval is not so well known, though. It was the second day of Unmesh, and I was to conduct a conversation with Deepti Naval whose appearance on the Hindi screen with Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978) had given every young girl like me a new icon – one we could readily identify with, since the doe-eyed beauty was so Indian! Not overwhelmingly dolled up, not westernised, not running around trees mindlessly, the personas she essayed were so close to life! If anything, here was an actor who’d come back from the US armed with a training in Fine Art – but spoke like us. That was the question on every lip as I entered the beautifully restored Gaiety Theatre – the Gothic architecture that was designed 135 years ago by an English architect following examples of Victorian Britannia, to be the Opera in the Town Hall complex built for the British rajas who’d shift the capital from Delhi to Shimla to escape the oppressive Indian summer. Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation with Deepti Naval at the Simla Literary Festival.
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