In Delhi, Deepti Naval revisits familiar terrain – the mountains

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By Ankush Arora

It’s fitting that actress Deepti Naval would inaugurate a photo exhibition of India’s mountains.

Her love for the wilderness is well known. Since the 1980s, the Amritsar-born Naval has taken many trips to the hills of northern India, mostly on trekking expeditions. It’s an interest she inherited from her parents, she said. Her mother, a painter, is a nature lover and her late father, a teacher and linguist, was an adventurer.

The show, now on display at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre, features images shot by photographer Kishore Thukral. They include the still waters of Nainital lake, the mysterious, jagged terrain of Himachal Pradesh’s Spiti valley, a hot air balloon suspended among the clouds in Solang, and an ancient monastery in Ladakh.

“Nature really tempts me. I keep going back to the mountains and driving (through) all those…mostly unknown paths. I love going off in the wilderness. I think it’s also I like to hear my own mind, to hear me thinking. Not just worrying,” Naval said.

It is an exploration that she, a graduate in fine arts, has taken to the canvas as well, most notably in her Kumaon (in Uttarakhand) series. Through broad, distinct brushstrokes, and bold colours she has ruminated on these landscapes. Her photography is also full of images from the mountains.

In the story “The Mad Tibetan” in her 2011 short story collection, she leaves Ladakh with an image of a “mad” local man dancing like a dervish in his red overcoat on “white earth”. After a sleepless and harrowing night, her jeep drives past the river that “flows with the secrets of the mountains in its heart.”

“I give a lot of credit to my wanderings. Because it just opens up your mind to life itself. Otherwise you are a protected star or film celebrity, staying in a home, rushing into a car or going somewhere else,” she said.

With two poetry books and a set of short stories to her credit, art has taken a backseat for Naval because of her writing. A third book of poems, “The River and I”, is due for a release this year.

Primarily a niche cinema actress and famous for her roles in films such as “Chashme Buddoor”, “Saath Saath” and “Katha”, she was last seen in supporting roles in “Bang Bang”, “Yaariyan” and “Inkaar”.

In 2013, she returned as the lead actress with Farooq Sheikh in “Listen Amaya”, a film about a young girl’s mother and her relationship with a widowed photographer.

Besides directing a film with Manisha Koirala, Naval will appear in a film on the exodus of Kashmiri pandits in the 1990s, first-time director Sanjay Amar said.

She is likely to perform on stage in Delhi as Punjabi poet and writer Amrita Pritam. Actor Shekhar Suman is Sahir Ludhianvi, the famous poet and Pritam’s love interest. The play, “Ek Mulaqat,” is about an imaginary meeting between Pritam and Ludhianvi which takes place on a cold winter evening in Delhi. It premiered in Mumbai last year.

Would Sheikh, her co-star of several films, have been the obvious choice if he were alive? “He would not have been the obvious choice for Sahir Ludhianvi, in spite of being one of the most well-spoken actors. I think Shekhar Suman, visually, fits the role. He almost looks like Sahir,” she said.

(Editing by Robert MacMillan. Follow him on Twitter @bobbymacReports and Ankush @Ankush_patrakar | This article is website-exclusive and cannot be reproduced without permission.)

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