While she set her goal when she was just nine years old, she also decided on what personality traits she would like to have. Actor Deepti Naval, as a nine-year-old kid, wanted to have “grace like a Balraj Sahni, be subtle like a Balraj Sahni and be genuine like a Balraj Sahni”, no matter what role she played when she grew up and became an actor.
The actor has revealed all this and more in her recently released anthology of short stories, The Mad Tibetan: Stories from Now and Then. The actor has put together four autobiographical stories and seven fiction stories inspired from her travels and incidents she has come across in her life in the book.
After writing two books of poetry, she took to writing short stories because she wanted to take the readers to those little slices of life that are never given in-depth thought. She says that she tries her hand at different artistic things like acting, photography, storytelling and writing poems because she wants to tell all her stories. “Even after doing something, when I still feel that I haven’t said much or I need to say more, I take to a different medium of expression. However, it’s essentially me conveying myself through the activities that I do,” she says.
She has written the book over many months. “I have been putting down my thoughts for years. However, I came to a point when I could think of fleshing out those thoughts into short stories. Some of the stories have been fleshed out from the ideas that occurred to me as early as in 1980s,” she says, adding that Gabriel García Márquez’s storytelling has had a strong influence on her.
Naval says that it was nostalgic to recall all those old moments while fleshing out her thoughts. “I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process of recreating, stretching it out and going back to remember exactly what happened at that point in time,” she says.
While she hopes to come out with an autobiography someday, right now Naval is waiting for the release of her first directorial debut Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Baarish and is also looking forward to the release of the film Listen Amaya with Farooq Sheikh. “It’s a beautiful film about two middle-aged people in Delhi,” she says.