Deepti Naval’s new book, A Country Called Childhood, has a unique quality of specificity and universality. At one level, the noted actor-author-painter’s work is an autobiography — an understandably indulgent look at innocent early years, of days spent playing with her elder sister, Bobby, and nights spent snug under a quilt with a book, at her home, Chandravaali, in Amritsar. It is about girls and their impish charm, and the little escapades to watch the latest Rajesh Khanna or Shammi Kapoor starrer at the cinemas.
On the other, it beautifully paints the picture of Amritsar in the 1950s and 60s, a city at peace with itself. She brings out the crevices and craters of the city’s socio-cultural canvas: the plight of a well-educated middle class man and his inability to get a job according to his qualification; a city where Brahmins interact with the cobbler community, but from a distance; of living next to a mosque — she calls it maseet (for masjid) in the typical Punjabi way — where the muezzin extended an invitation for prayer through his azaan and where, unlike now, women worshippers were welcomed.
