The fight must go on even in the darkest hour, says Deepti Naval
The veteran actor bemoans the loss of Sushant while recounting her own fight with depression, anxiety and suicidal urges
Bemoaning the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, veteran actor Deepti Naval reached out on Facebook to share with all young people her own struggle with deep depression in the 1990s.
Deeply affected by Sushant’s passing away in ‘the darkest of all times’, she said that she wanted to reach out to all young people and dedicate her 1991 poem ‘Black Wind’ to all those who may be struggling with dark thoughts.
“Dark days these,” says
Deepti, “so much has been happening - mind has come to a point of stillness . . . or rather numbness. Today I feel like sharing a poem I wrote back in the years when I was fighting suicidal thoughts - yes, fighting ...andlikehow...”
Looking back, Deepti says, that those were hard times for her as her personal life was in shatters and professional life was no better and it could have been easy to give it all up. However, Deepti says, “I took it upon myself to fight without drugs for I had seen the beautiful actor Parveen Babi bloat and lose her mind with anti-depressants.” The poem describes her despair: ‘Gloom deepens into darkness, turns purple, I feel dark inside . . ./ they are here, they drive me/ Dark shadows in my room/Go jump!/One leap across the railing - That’s all it takes’
“But I did not leap, I fought ferociously by painting for hours or writing...doing what I could to drive away the darkness. This is what I want my younger friends to do.”
Describing her journey with Sushant this January from Chandigarh to Mumbai, she says “We talked all the way and I reminded him that he had played my son in one of his early films. He was charming but I could feel his anxiety that his good work was not reaching the people. I told him that it would with time but he didn’t seem to have that time.”
She added that the talented ‘Chhichhore’ actor was gone but she did not want any other young talent to go like that. “The Black Wind must be defeated!” she says.