A tete-a-tete with 1980s Bollywood darling, Deepti Naval, on painting, priorities and tranquility

There is a small sculpture of Durga that hangs on a wall of my home; it was gifted to us by someone I have no memory of. That remarkable face of the Goddess, with those big haunting eyes, stares at us silently as if out of compulsion or boredom. Stares at us, but does not see. Much like the over-large eyes that Jamini Roy was known to paint. Those big empty eyes clean as a slate, staring at us from advertisement hoardings and Durga pujo pandals; staring at us, watching us move from one day to another at a manic pace; those still pair of eyes. A similar pair of empty eyes, gaze at us from a wooden beam. These eyes, unlike Roy’s white, are black as the night sky, and dark as our sins. This creation called Mask on Wooden Beam is a painting by Deepti Naval. The most prominent feature of the portraits done by Naval is the pair of eyes she paints, which are often her own. The pregnant nun looks at us with eyes that question our motives behind the interest we take in her. She asks us why is it that we can’t accept her the way she is. Why is it that we are questioning her purity? How can a nun be pregnant, we wonder, isn’t that a contradiction? When Naval says that “Everything that you create is a reflection of yourself,” this is what she means. At the surface, the emotions that this painting evokes are that of purity, and perhaps rebellion, the need to go against the norms of world, but at a deeper level, it reflects an internal conflict. The contradictions are the artist's own, her fight, with herself. Naval tells me that she is a conflicting person indeed. On days she is a recluse, a hermit, while on others she is the most approachable person on planet. She says that she often finds herself switching between personalities of a recluse and an outgoing person. When in her reclusive phase, Naval locks herself up and creates. She unearths the meaning of life and ponders over the grey shades of life, so when she says that she has mastered the art of self-destruction, you are bound to believe her. The art of self-destruction No one does it better I have mastered the craft with great skill A craft not easy to master, mind you. Talking about this poem, The Art of Self-destruction, she says this is how she feels about her life. It is an observation she made, in the course of her life. “Life, as it seems, is going fine, until one day, everything suddenly falls apart and breaks into pieces, and then you start again,” she says. The great artist Lucian Freud, who also painted self-portraits, had once said that all art is autobiographical, “Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait, even if it’s a chair.” Naval, who seems to be belonging to a similar school of thought, also believes in something similar. She says that all her work—her paintings, poems, short stories, films is a reflection of herself. She is the pregnant nun, and she is the Red Head, staring at us with those deep, dark, pensive eyes, daring us to stare back at her. My first memory of Naval, coincidentally enough, is of her eyes, her happy, gleaming with admiration for her idealist poet lover, eyes. A scene from the 1982 Raman Singh movie Saath Saath, where Farooque Sheikh the poor idealist poet, boiling with anger over the corrupt capitalist world, is pouring his heart out in front of her, and Naval awestruck by his principles and ideals, is staring at him with her smiling eyes locked in admiration. Geeta, the character played by Naval in the film, was not the only one falling in love with Avinash (Sheikh). I, too, was awestruck. So much so, that I saw myself in Naval. Naval says that this was the very reason that drew her to films. She wanted to act, so that she could portray the myriad emotions that we experience in our everyday lives. She became an actor, so that people could relate to her characters. “It was not the money or the fame, but the art of acting that made me join films,” she says. “I wanted to leave an impression on people.” The industrywallahs believe that Naval is as talented as the Late Smita Patil, however she never got her due. Naval herself accepts that while her contemporaries have more than 200 films in their kitty, she just has some 70-odd films. The 1980s and the early 1990s were known to be worst years for Bollywood. The formula based, masala films were reigning supreme in those days. In that period, Naval also did a few shoddy films. My most disappointing Naval moment came when I saw her portraying the role of a domesticated wife Sharda in Kalpataru's Ghar Ho To Aisa. Naval, who played the role of the family’s elder bahu and wife of Raj Kiran, who by then had mastered the art of being the spoilt elder son, was often treated with disrespect and beaten up by the saas, Bindu. Roles like this, and a few others that followed, made her quit films, if only for the time being. Naval took a sabbatical from films in the 1990s, and went on a self exploratory journey. She says she had stopped enjoying the process and had to, therefore, leave. “I was being offered the same kinds of roles, and I was scared that I might get stuck, that I might not grow at all, and so I took a break.” Her second innings started with unconventional and experimental films like Leela and Freaky Chakra. In both the films, even though they flopped at the box office, Naval’s performances were appreciated. Known to have played many intense roles, Naval says that she is, at times, scared of getting into the skin of the characters. “Sometimes some roles make you scared when you know you need to go in to the mind of the character that you cannot work on the surface.” But at the same time, she says, she enjoys the “challenge an intense role brings to you”. These days she is busy trying to get her film Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Barish released. The actor, who donned the director’s hat for the first time, tells me that when compared to making a film “acting is a cake walk”. She says that though she enjoyed the journey, it was one hell of a process. And what is harder than making a film? “It is getting it released,” she adds with a smile. From the dainty Sandhya of Salunke chawl who wishes to marry a robila (flamboyant) man in Sai Paranjpay’s Katha, to Leela Krishnamoorthy, the freespirited middle-aged widow, who discovers love late in life in Listen… Amaya, Naval has done it all. She is a woman who has lived her life regret-free and on her own terms. Recently when remake of the Sai Paranjpay classic Chashme Buddoor hit the screens, one reviewer said that films like the older version are not being made anymore. It would be just, perhaps, to say, that people like Naval, they do not make them anymore either.