Her
dreams look for the real thing, and her reality
chases a dream. Deepti Naval, the actress who
questioned the norms of cinema for over two decades,
released her first book of poems that are pensive
yet tranquil, surreal yet true to life. “They’re
just like me: full of contradictions, ”
she tells ARCHANA JAYAKUMAR
THE STENCH OF SANITY
It will be too late – you will
Die of it!
This thing that
sleeps with
You
Night after night, like
An aging wanton woman,
Spent, but not quite spent –
And she waits for
you to
Dump her, in some dark
Street
Corner…. yet follows you,
Drunken whore !
Like the lull after
a storm, her defiant words symbolise the triumph
of the vanquished. Like the masochistic pleasure
sought in self-destruction, her haunting symphonies
are pensive yet tranquil, surreal yet true to
life. Deepti Naval’s first book of poems
in English titled Black Wind and Other Poems was
recently released in Mumbai. It shatters all preconceived
notions you would harbour about a Bollywood actress.
Having essayed
not-conformist roles in a career spanning two
decades, Deepti’s reflections find equally
articulate expression in her paintings, self-portraits,
photography and writing. “But cinema has
always been my first love. I had decided I was
going to be an actress when I was seven,”
recounts the Amritsar-born artist, who moved to
New York to major in art and to study photography.
“My parents would’ve had a fit if
they knew about my passion for acting,”
she laughs.
Deepti arrived in
Mumbai in the early 1980s with a desire to work
with the likes of Shyam Benegal, Sai Paranjpye,
Gulzar and Basu Bhattacharya. After some “wonderful
films”, Deepti found herself disgusted at
“pathetic” projects that she was offered.
“When I have other cerebral inclinations,
why should I associate myself with such films?”
she queries, weighing her words carefully. That’s
when she tried her hand at verse, and soon published
a book of poems in Hindi Lamha-Lamha. “The
experiences that I’d survived found expression
in my work. Sometimes it takes you an age to come
to terms with turbulent phases you go through,
and actually write about them, ” reflects
Deepti , admitting that it’s difficult to
“make myself vulnerable to the reader who
gets a clear insight into my mind ”. But
the belief in the universality of emotions gave
her the courage to get published.
Transporting reality
into the world of the “so-called insane”
is the second section of the book titled The Silent
Scream. “I’d spent a couple of weeks
in an asylum to study the mentally unstable for
Amol Palekar’s Ankahi”. Deepti was
so drawn into their world that she “bled”
poignant poems (as lyricist Gulzar put it) such
as The Stench of Sanity and Goddess. “There
are no ‘should do’s” in their
world . No masks, no facades. It made me wonder
who is really sane……” she wistfully
remarks. These intimate encounters also found
their way into a script she wrote, which hasn’t
been translated onto celluloid yet. “It’s
too dark. Maybe, I’ll turn it into a novel
some day,” remarks Deepti.
She counts off Pablo
Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Garcia Lorca, Vikram Seth
and Arundhati Roy among her favourites, pointing
to a few of their works that lie around in her
Andheri home. Almost austere, the only splash
of life is added by her larger-than-life paintings
and self-portraits, especially the one titled
Contradiction from her 1993 show Reflections.
I tried to portray the classic conflict, the contradictions
that one is so full of. It’s ironic that
we so carefully create a self image, and then
go right out and destroy it to shreds, surprising
even ourselves…..”
|