RAIPUR: ‘A country called childhood’ is a metaphor for the childhood I experienced in Amritsar, a childhood filled with love, adventure, mystery, tragedy, and joy. Said actress and writer Deepti Naval, during The Write Circle event held by The Ehsaas Women in the state capital.
The Write Circle, is a boutique event of the Prabha Khaitan Foundation.
Naval took the audience on the journey of her writing process, she started writing the book 25 years ago, it is after finishing the first four chapters that she realised that this book needed extensive research. She retraced her childhood journey from Lahore to Amritsar. Naval recalls the influence the stories of her mother, her paternal grandmother and her maternal grandmother had on her. She used to hear stories about her paternal grandmother, who was a matriculate in the 1920s, a sanskrit scholar and a social activist, working actively for the upliftment of women in her locality. Her mother and maternal grandmother were refugees from Burma, who relocated to Lahore after the Japanese invasion of Burma, only to become a refugee again during the partition of India. The stories of hardships and strength of these women moulded her into a gritty woman.
Navals book takes us to a tour of the city of Amritsar, the period of war with Pakistan, the mass migration of people, and the way it catered characters in her life, from which she could draw inspiration.
