Neena Gupta: I’m not a bold person

When an actor writes his/her autobiography, the readers who pick up the book aren’t just regular literature lovers but also fans who want to know more about the star, or writers who need fodder to spin off stories from the revelations. And it’s for the latter that actor Neena Gupta has clearly mentioned right at the start of her recently released autobiography, titled Sach Kahun Toh: “The media doesn’t know me. Nobody knows the real me.”

One senses too much angst against the industry, and feels compelled to ask: ‘Why so angry?’ And Gupta shares how she’s always been presented to the public through the media gaze, based on just one event in her life. “I’m not a bold person,” she says matter-of-factly, and adds, “Having a baby out of wedlock doesn’t make me ‘bold’. And that one incident doesn’t prove that I’m a strong person, who will not succumb to the wrong or bad circumstances and lose my way! My biggest strength is me saying to myself, whenever I face a challenge, that I’ll fight this and move on.”

“Aur main koi acting nahin kar rahi. I’m talking about the story of my life, which is narrated by me and not the media,” says Gupta, confessing that it was something to rewind her entire life to share some of the facets about her, which she has revealed only now. Be it the challenges in her profession or struggles in personal life, the National Award-winning actor has stated it all without exaggeration, and so lucidly that it makes a reader feel as if the 66-year-old is sitting there, narrating it all herself! “This is pure out of my heart. So jahan meri zindagi mein drama hai, wahan bata diya, aur jahan nahin, wahan pe chhod diya. Jhoota drama thodi laungi,” she remarks.

While the world, which knows her, perceives her as a solid persona, Gupta recalls it’s her father who was indeed the stronger one and stood by her like a rock especially when she decided to give birth to her child, Masaba (fashion designer). “What I had done to him was a sin, and when I decided to stick to it, I thought my father would never support me. I thought he would never come since he was old fashioned. He came from a place where women touched feet... and here he was supporting me. I couldn’t believe! We didn’t have a relationship where we could talk about what I decided to do, but there was an understanding... Later, when I brought him to Mumbai from Delhi, to live with me, I thought he would give me gaali for doing so, but I found he was happy going to the beach and joining a laughter club, which also celebrated his birthday. And that kind of life he never had in Delhi,” she reminisces.

Talking of her growing up years in Delhi, before she moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting, Gupta has opened a Pandora’s Box on the issue of molestation which almost every young girl goes through and yet chooses to not speak up for the fear of losing ‘the freedom to go out alone’. Gupta mentions in her book about incidents such as when she visited an eye doctor, who went on to examine other parts of her body that were unrelated to the eye. Do the recesses of her mind still jolt her with these thoughts from the past and make her feel that had she spoken up the first time it happened, things would have been different? “That’s why I’ve written about the abuse,” states Gupta, adding, “In those days, even if a young girl would tell her mother about what happened with them, the mothers would often not believe it, and reason that it could be their imagination... Bahut kuchh hua life mein — doctor, tailor — they leave a scar on the young mind that you will not forget.”

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