I am consumed by what I am doing at that moment: Deepti Naval

What’s awe-inspiring bout Deepti Naval is not that she acts in, and directs films, paints, is a photographer and writes poetry. What’s awe-inducing is that she does them all, so well. Her performances win her awards, she has published two well-received books of her poems (Black Wind And Other Poems and Lamha Lamha), she’s had two exhibitions of her paintings too.

To be able to do a superlative job in each medium, Deepti says, “requires a certain discipline.” Talking about her working style, Deepti gently explains, ‘The way I work, I get into these phases, where I am only writing or painting or acting, I am consumed by what I am doing at that moment and can’t think of anything else. And there’s a certain discipline involved in all of this, a discipline of being fully there.”

Thoughts to words
About how the book of short stories — Mad Tibetan — Stories From Then And Now — came about, she says, “I had some stories sitting in my computer. When I showed my editor Sanjana Roy Chowdhury around three or four of them, we hit upon the idea of writing a book for short stories. Only, she wanted 12 of them!”

Book launch by Big B 
While the book was launched in Bangalore by Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, for the Mumbai launch Amitabh Bachchan did the honours.

Commenting on how that came to be, she recounts, “My editor and I wanted somebody who is erudite, well-read and well spoken to launch the book and Amitabh Bachchan was the only person we could think of. It was very nice that he readily agreed.”

All her films
Deepti has not completely resigned herself from movies. She was last seen in Tell Me O Khuda, and even more memorably as Farhan Akhtar’s mother in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Memories in March, where she acted with the award-winning director Rituparno Ghosh, won the National Award for Best English film, this year.

While the award, she reveals, has “made me happy,” she says, in a moment of candour, “I knew the film would get some significant award, but I don’t understand what they mean by giving it the Best English film. And it should have got more than one award!” Acting with Rituparno, she happily admits “was very nice. Having a director as a co-actor was something different.”

The actor will next be seen in Listen Amaya, with her Chasme Badoor co-star Farooque Sheikh and “an exciting new actor called Swara Bhaskar,” she warmly ends.