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Tracing Deepti Naval’s life through her memoir, A Country Called Childhood
On Tuesday evening, actor Deepti Naval unveiled her memoir, A Country Called Childhood in the Capital
On Tuesday evening, actor Deepti Naval unveiled her memoir, A Country Called Childhood in the Capital. Twenty years in the making, her memoir has taken shape in the form of evocative vignettes peppered with details about her childhood, her cinematic calling and more. The book was launched by actor Sharmila Tagore who shared her insights. “She delves into her childhood with admirable honesty. I felt many emotions going through her book, the uppermost emotion was of joy...pure, unadulterated joy,” she said. The veteran actor features prominently in the memoir as shared by Naval. “After watching Anupama (1966), I stopped talking for a whole season. My mother would call me and I would not answer, or I’d just stand near the kitchen because mujhe toh nahi bolna tha na,” she shared.
Revelation and Catharsis
The evening took the audience through more such chapters of the actor’s childhood, including the Partition, the Indian exodus from Burma and growing up in a syncretic Amritsar. “Writing about my childhood gave me a chance to look at myself and where I was going. It was a revelation to me; tracing my family, visiting all those places in cities like Imphal, Lahore was cathartic but also very illuminating. We grew up in a house in Hall Bazaar overlooking the Khair ud Din Masjid and we would often peep from our terrace into the courtyard. It was part of our life,” she said. Sharing how her family name changed from Sharma to Naval, she said that her father wanted a different surname as “he didn’t want to be just another Sharma; there were so many Sharmas in Amritsar at that time.” That’s how Naval, which means new, came to be.
Deepti on the Run
Another interesting anecdote, one that would have never made it to the memoir had it not been for lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar, is about Naval running away from her home. “He’d call me and ask, ‘acha bachhoo, voh likha ki nahi?’ and every time, I’d be vague. But he would always say that without mentioning that incident, my memoir would never be complete,” she shared, adding that she just ran off and spent the night at the railway station in Pathankot.
No Escaping the Drama
When it was revealed that Deepti Naval’s publisher called her a drama queen, a collective sigh filled the room even as a guilty-looking Naval blushed. “I had a hat stand I used to talk to. I was small for a very long time and it saw me grow from a small girl to someone who finally reached the mirror,” Naval confessed. She shared that her grandfather had three boxes reserved for himself at three different cinema halls around their house because he liked watching a film a day. “He would go inside one hall, watch a scene or two and then come out and go about his day. He was just like that,” she said.
While charting her journey into films, Naval also noted that her body of work has been rather small as compared to her peers. “My colleagues have done 250 films while I only have 100. I think I was being choosy at that time,” she added. The one thing she misses, though, is not being cast in song-and-dance roles. “I am a trained kathak dancer, so I miss that I never got such roles,” she said. Her candour left the audience in splits and hopeful that this memoir will be followed up with another.
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