Not many of us know that noted film actress Deepti Naval is also a very good painter. She has painted some awe-inspiring landscape and portraits. The landscapes from “Kumaon Series” are especially worth mentioning. Some of her Self portraits are also sublime. But her magnum opus as an artist is her “Nun Series”, in which a trilogy of paintings portray pregnant nuns, an intriguing subject to paint. Two paintings of the triology – “Black and White Study for Nun” and “Blue Nun” are faceless, while the third is a self portrait : “Self portrait as a Pregnant Nun.”
Why on earth would she want to paint herself as a Pregnant Nun? When Deepti had exhibited her art-work in Mumbai sometime back, this question kept popping up and Deepti found it hard to explain. So she decided to jot down some reflections and uploaded the text on her website. She gave this particular painting a sub-title called “Contradiction.” And yet, the mystery doesn’t seem to be decoded.
There is an another painting of this series called "Small Nuns", which can immediately remind us of Federico Fellini. The Italian master, known for being an outrageous filmmaker with Baroque excess, had showcased a sort of "fashion parade of Nuns" in his autobiographical film "Roma", a grand carnivalesque contradiction unto itself. Countless references of Church, Christianity, Catholic faith we encounter in Fellini, most notably in "Eight and a Half", "La Dolce Vita" and even in the "Nights of Cabiria" and here we can see the contradiction that Deepti refer to. Cabiria was a prostitute and all Fellini characters are deeply hedonist, even immoral in a sense. He deals with them all the time. The image of a massive Christ idol flying over Rome, the eternal city, stands out in the opening sequence of "Dolce Vita". By juxtaposing faith and hedonism, Fellini was only making his point more clear.
In her note on this particular painting, Deepti had likened pregnancy to the sign of life and Nuns being living epitome of renunciation of life, and the contradiction is stark. You can’t for your life manage to miss it. One can not dare to delve deeper into further details. All we can say is maybe this is how she sees herself.
During the shooting of “Hip Hip Hurrah”, Deepti had fallen in love with Parkash Jha, the then young and promising director and soon both of them tied the not. However, the relationship proved to be shortlived and soon they broke apart. Then she got engaged to Vinod Pandit but the relation could not be culminated into a lasting one as Vinod was diagnosed with cancer and soon after he passed away. Deepti adapted a girl called Disha, but she apparently has no children of her own. No details of her possible miscarriages, abortions or pregnancy are known and a private person that she is, it is also unlikely that anything will be ever known about them.
What we can see and know is her art and craft, which always has some deep autobiographical notes. The image-repertoire of her Nun series, the three pregnant Nuns, two of them faceless and especially this particular painting "Self Portrait As Pregnant Nun" is Deepti’s finest achievement as an artist, the closest she could get to express the inner music of her, submerging all voices and sounds in one grand symphony of life. She was later to revisit this Nun theme again, this time in her poem called “Virgin”, an emphatic monologue with vivid details, but more about it in some other article.