Beyond the expected

Among some long-lasting friends and the intelligentsia of Mumbai who came for the launch of her first book — A Pack of Lies, Urmilla Deshpande seems a bit lost. “I am quite nervous. The writing process is so different from all of this: When you write you are lonely,” she says in a low voice.

With her discrete smile, one could think that Urmilla — daughter of the famous author Shashi Deshpande — is a reserved lady. But her mane of curly brown hair speaks on her behalf to say that she is as unconventional as the main character in her book, Virginia, is. “Urmilla has always been ahead of time and controversial,” explains her 30-year-old friend, Imam Siddique. 

Urmilla ignores taboos. A Pack of Lies talks about sex, drugs, sometimes in a crude way and she does not care about judgments. “In India, sex is inside the bedroom. I am looking for a middle place where it would not be disconnected from people. Each human being is a sexual person,” she explains.

Indeed “Umi”, as her friends call her, has been a lot of things: A model, a photographer and lately a writer. But in the world of Virginia — a young fashion model, the writer emphasises the difference between fiction and reality. “This is not an autobiography. I was inspired by my own life but then I made up a complete fictional character. I added drama and colours,” she says. “This is why all these words are lies. And when you talk about yourself, it’s always lies because you change all the time.”

She adds, “I could not write with my mother alive. I was afraid of what she would think.” If this inheritance has kept Urmilla far from writing for a while, it’s no longer an issue. “I wrote a second novel and I have begun writing a third one. I am now able to say that I am a writer!” she concludes, smiling.